Electrical power cable monitoring device using low side electrode and earth ground separation

ABSTRACT

Techniques, systems and articles are described for monitoring electrical equipment of a power grid and predicting likelihood failure events of such electrical equipment. In one example, a sensing device is configured to couple to an electrical power cable. The sensing device includes a plurality of concentric layers and a monitoring device. The plurality of concentric layers include a first layer, second layer, and third layer. The first layer is configured to concentrically surround a central conductor of the electrical cable and includes an insulating material. The second layer includes a conducting material. The third layer includes a resistive material configured to resist electrical flow between the second layer and a ground conductor exterior to the third layer. The monitoring device includes a sensor and communication unit configured to output data indicative of the sensor data.

This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/729,325, filed Sep. 10, 2018, which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.

TECHNICAL FIELD

The present disclosure relates to the field of electrical equipment, including power cables and accessories, for power utilities.

BACKGROUND

Electrical power grids include numerous components that operate in diverse locations and conditions, such as above ground, underground, cold weather climates, hot weather climates, etc. When a power grid suffers a failure, it can be difficult to determine the cause of the failure. For example, a power grid may include hundreds or thousands of discrete components, such as transformers, cables, cable splices, etc., and a failure in the power grid may be caused by a failure in any single component or a collection of the components. The root cause of such failures may include human error in installation, manufacturing defects, or wear and tear on the component, among other causes. While replacement of the electrical components can be costly, simply finding the fault can be time consuming and expensive. If a component fails in service, the total cost can include downtime for customer operations, liability, safety, or regulatory scrutiny, in addition to the actual costs incurred to locate and replace faulty components. Further, faulty components may pose a safety risk to utility workers, civilians, homes, buildings, or other infrastructure.

SUMMARY

The present disclosure provides techniques for monitoring electrical equipment of a power grid and predicting the likelihood of failure events of such electrical equipment. The electrical equipment may include cable accessories, which may include a cable splice body or a cable termination body. In some examples, a cable accessory includes a metallic connector to electrically couple the central conductor of an electrical cable to another object, such as a termination device or the central conductor of another electrical cable. A cable splice body of the cable accessory includes an insulator configured to surround the connector and a conductive, or semi-conductive insulation screen, also referred to as a low side electrode, surrounding the insulator. In contrast to some cable accessories that include an exterior conductor at ground potential (also referred to as a ground conductor) electrically connected to the insulation screen or low side electrode, cable accessories of this disclosure may electrically isolate the insulation screen from the ground conductor via a separator layer that includes a high impedance material. Electrically isolating the low side electrode from the ground conductor via a separator layer may enable a monitoring device of the cable accessory to perform a variety of functions.

The cable accessory includes a monitoring device may having one or more sensors, one or more communication devices, and/or one or more power harvesting devices, which may be electrically coupled to the insulation screen to perform a variety of functions. The one or more sensors output sensor data indicative of conditions of the cable accessory. Examples of such sensors include temperature sensors, partial discharge sensors, smoke sensors, gas sensors, acoustic sensors, among others. The communication unit(s) may transmit sensed data to a remote computing system and/or apply local analytics on sensed data.

According to aspects of this disclosure, a computing system, such a the remote computing system and/or the monitoring device of the cable accessory, determines a health of the cable accessory based at least in part on the sensor data. For example, the computing system may, e.g., in real-time, determine whether the cable accessory will fail within a predetermined amount of time based at least in part on the sensor data. By determining a health of the cable accessories and predicting failure events before they occur, a computing system may more quickly and accurately identify potential failure events that may affect the distribution of power throughout the power grid, or worker and/or civilian safety, to name only a few examples. Further, the computing system may proactively and preemptively generate notifications and/or alter the operation of a power grid before a failure event occurs.

In some examples, a sensing device is configured to couple to an electrical power cable. The sensing device includes a plurality of concentric layers and a monitoring device. The plurality of concentric layers include a first layer configured to concentrically surround a central conductor of the electrical cable and comprising an insulating material, a second layer comprising a conducting material, and a third layer comprising a resistive material configured to resist electrical flow between the second layer and a ground conductor exterior to the third layer, where the second layer is disposed between the first layer and the third layer. The monitoring device includes a sensor electrically coupled to the second layer and configured to generate sensor data indicative of one or more conditions of the device and a communication unit configured to output data indicative of the sensor data.

In some examples, a system includes a cable accessory configured to couple to an electrical cable, at least one processor, and memory. The cable accessory includes a splice body and a monitoring device. The splice body includes a plurality of concentric layers, the plurality of concentric layers including: a first layer configured to concentrically surround a central conductor of the electrical cable and comprising an insulating material, a second layer comprising a conducting material, and a third layer comprising a resistive material configured to resist electrical flow between the second layer and a ground conductor exterior to the third layer, where the second layer is disposed between the first layer and the third layer. The monitoring device includes a sensor electrically coupled to the second layer and configured to generate sensor data indicative of one or more conditions of the cable accessory. The memory includes instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to: receive the sensor data; determine, based at least in part on the sensor data, a health of the cable accessory; and responsive to determining the health of the cable accessory, perform an operation.

In some examples, a method includes receiving, by at least one processor of a computing system, sensor data generated by at least one sensor of a cable accessory configured to couple to an electrical cable. The sensor is electrically coupled to a second layer of a splice body that includes a plurality of concentric layers. The plurality of concentric layers include a first layer, a second layer, and a third layer. The first layer is configured to concentrically surround a central conductor of the electrical cable and includes an insulating material. The second layer includes a conducting material. The third layer includes a resistive material configured to resist electrical flow between the second layer and a ground conductor exterior to the third layer, wherein the second layer is disposed between the first layer and the third layer. The method includes determining, by the at least one processor, based at least in part on the sensor data, a health of the cable accessory. The method further includes performing, by the at least one processor, based on the health of the cable accessory, at least one operation.

The details of one or more examples of the disclosure are set forth in the accompanying drawings and the description below. Other features, objects, and advantages of the disclosure will be apparent from the description and drawings, and from the claims.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating an example system in which electrical utility equipment, such as electrical power lines, having embedded sensors and communication capabilities are utilized within a number of work environments and are managed by an electrical equipment management system (EEMS), in accordance with various techniques of this disclosure.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram illustrating an operating perspective of the electrical equipment management system shown in FIG. 1 , in accordance with various techniques of this disclosure.

FIG. 3 is a conceptual diagram of an example cable accessory configured to electrically and physically couple two electrical cables, in accordance with various techniques of this disclosure.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram illustrating an example gateway that is configured to communicate with a cable accessory and EEMS, in accordance with various techniques of this disclosure.

FIG. 5 is an example graphical user interface of the electrical equipment management system, in accordance with techniques of this disclosure.

FIG. 6 is a flow chart illustrating example operations performed by one or more computing devices that are configured to monitor electrical utility equipment, in accordance with various techniques of this disclosure.

FIGS. 7A-7D are conceptual diagrams illustrating example cable accessories, in accordance with one or more aspects of this disclosure.

FIG. 8 is a conceptual block diagram illustrating an example control unit for a cable accessory, in accordance with one or more aspects of this disclosure.

FIG. 9A is a conceptual diagram illustrating an example cable accessory configured to detect partial discharge events, in accordance with one or more aspects of this disclosure.

FIG. 9B is an example circuit diagram of the example cable accessory of FIG. 9A, in accordance with one or more aspects of this disclosure.

FIG. 10A is a conceptual diagram illustrating an example cable accessory configured to measure voltage, in accordance with one or more aspects of this disclosure.

FIG. 10B is an example circuit diagram of the example cable accessory of FIG. 10A, in accordance with one or more aspects of this disclosure.

FIG. 11A is a conceptual diagram illustrating an example cable accessory configured to harvest energy from electrical power transmitted in electrical cables, in accordance with one or more aspects of this disclosure.

FIG. 11B is an example circuit diagram of the example cable accessory of FIG. 11A, in accordance with one or more aspects of this disclosure.

FIG. 12 is an example circuit diagram of an example power harvesting device, in accordance with one or more aspects of this disclosure.

FIG. 13A is a conceptual diagram illustrating an example cable accessory configured to communicate data via electrical cables, in accordance with one or more aspects of this disclosure.

FIG. 13B is an example circuit diagram of the example cable accessory of FIG. 13A, in accordance with one or more aspects of this disclosure.

FIG. 14 is a conceptual diagram illustrating an example cable accessory electrically and physically coupling two electrical cables, in accordance with one or more aspects of this disclosure.

FIG. 15 is a conceptual diagram illustrating an example cable accessory electrically and physically coupling two electrical cables, in accordance with one or more aspects of this disclosure.

FIGS. 16A-16B are conceptual diagrams illustrating an example cable accessory electrically and physically coupling an electrical cable to a cable termination device, in accordance with one or more aspects of this disclosure.

It is to be understood that the embodiments may be utilized and structural changes may be made without departing from the scope of the invention. The figures are not necessarily to scale. Like numbers used in the figures refer to like components. However, it will be understood that the use of a number to refer to a component in a given figure is not intended to limit the component in another figure labeled with the same number.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

FIG. 1 is a block diagram illustrating an example computing system 2 that includes an electrical equipment management system (EEMS) 6 for monitoring electrical power cables of an electrical power grid. As described herein, EEMS 6 may allow authorized users to manage inspections, maintenance, and replacement of electrical equipment for a power grid and to adjust operation of the power grid.

In general, EEMS 6 provides data acquisition, monitoring, activity logging, data storage, reporting, predictive analytics, and alert generation. For example, EEMS 6 may include an underlying analytics engine for predicting failure events of articles of electrical equipment and an alerting system, in accordance with various examples described herein. In general, a failure event may refer to interruption of electrical power delivery between an electrical power source and an electrical power consumer, for example, caused by deterioration or breakage of an article of electrical equipment (e.g., a cable splice).

As further described below, EEMS 6 provides an integrated suite of electrical equipment management tools and implements various techniques of this disclosure. That is, EEMS 6 provides a system for managing electrical equipment (e.g., electrical cables, splices, transformers, etc.) within one or more physical environments 8, which may be cities, neighborhoods, buildings, construction sites, or any physical environment. The techniques of this disclosure may be realized within various parts of system 2.

As shown in the example of FIG. 1 , system 2 represents a computing environment in which a computing device within of a plurality of physical environments 8A, 8B (collectively, environments 8) electronically communicate with EEMS 6 via one or more computer networks 4. Each of physical environment 8 represents a physical environment in which one or more electrical power lines 24A-24D (collectively, power lines 24) provide power from a power source (e.g., power plant) to one or more consumers (e.g., businesses, homes, government facilities, etc.).

In this example, environment 8A is shown as generally as having electrical equipment 20, while environment 8B is shown in expanded form to provide a more detailed example. In the example of FIG. 1 , includes a plurality of articles of electrical equipment 20, such as one or more power delivery nodes 22A-22N (collectively, power delivery nodes 22), one or more power lines 24, one or more communication hubs 26A-26D (collectively, communication hubs 26), and one or more gateways 28.

In the example of FIG. 1 , environment 8B includes wireless communication hubs 26 and/or one or more gateways 28. In general, communication hubs 26 and gateways 28 operate as communication devices for relaying communications between EEMS 6 and monitoring devices 33 monitoring respective articles of electrical equipment 20 (e.g., cable accessories 34). Communication hubs 26 and gateways 28 may each be communicatively coupled to EEMS 6 via wired and/or wireless communication. For example, wireless communication hubs 26 and/or gateway 28 may include a cellular radio (e.g., GSM, CDMA, LTE, etc.), Bluetooth® radio, WiFi® radio, low power wide area network (LPWAN), etc. As another example, wireless communication hubs 26 and/or gateway 28 may include a wired connection, such as a network interface card (e.g. such as an Ethernet card), an optical transceiver, or any other type of device that can send and/or receive data. According to some examples, communication hubs 24 and/or gateways 28 may communicate with other devices using power line communication techniques. In other words, in some examples, gateways 28 may communicate with monitoring devices 33 over power lines 24. In some examples, wireless communication hubs 26 and gateways 28 may be capable of buffering data in case communication is lost with EEMS 6. Moreover, communication hubs 26 and gateway 28 may be programmable via EEMS 6 so that local alert rules may be installed and executed without requiring a connection to the cloud. As such, communication hubs 26 and gateways 28 may provide a relay of streams of event data from monitoring devices 33, and provides a local computing environment for localized alerting based on streams of events.

Power delivery nodes 22 may include one or more input lines to receive power (e.g., directly from a power source or indirectly via another power delivery node 22) and one or more output lines to directly or indirectly (e.g., via another power delivery node 22) distribute power to consumers (e.g., homes, businesses, etc.). Power delivery nodes 22 may include a transformer to step voltages up or down. In some examples, power delivery node 22A may be a relatively small node to distribute power to homes in a neighborhood, such as an electrical cabinet distribution substation, pole-mount transformer, or pad-mount transformer. As another example, power delivery node 22N may be a relatively large node (e.g., a transmission substation) that distributes power to other power delivery nodes (e.g., distribution substations), such that the other power delivery nodes further distribute power to consumers (e.g., homes, businesses, etc.).

Power lines 24 may transmit electrical power from a power source (e.g., a power plant) to a power consumer, such as a business or home. Power lines 24 may be underground, underwater, or suspended overhead (e.g., from wooden poles, metal structures, etc.). Power lines 24 may be used for electrical power transmission at relatively high voltages (e.g., compared to electrical cables utilized within a home, which may transmit electrical power between approximately 12 volts and approximately 240 volts depending on application and geographic region). For example, power lines 24 may transmit electrical power above approximately 600 volts (e.g., between approximately 600 volts and approximately 1,000 volts). However, it should be understood that power lines 24 may transmit electrical power over any voltage and/or frequency range. For example, lines 24 may transmit electrical power within different voltage ranges. In some examples, a first type of lines 24 may transmit voltages of more than approximately 1,000 volts, such as for distributing power between a residential or small commercial customer and a power source (e.g., power utility). As another example, a second type of lines 24 may transmit voltages between approximately 1 kV and approximately 69 kV, such as for distributing power to urban and rural communities. A third type of lines 24 may transmit voltages greater than approximately 69 kV, such as for sub-transmission and transmission of bulk quantities of electric power and connection to very large consumers.

Power lines 24 include electrical cables 32 and one or more electrical cable accessories 34A-34J. Each cable 32 includes a conductor which may be radially surrounded by one or more layers of insulation. Cables 32 may include an individual central conductor a plurality of conductors (e.g., three phase or multi-conductor cable). Example cable accessories 34 may include splices, separable connectors, terminations, and connectors, among others. In some examples, cable accessories 34 may include cable splices configured to couple (e.g., electrically and physically) two or more cables 32. For example, as shown FIG. 1 , cable accessory 34A electrically and physically couples cable 32A to cable 32B, cable accessory 34B electrically and physically couples cable 32B to cable 32C, and so forth. In some examples, terminations may be configured to couple (e.g., electrically and physically) a cable 32 to additional electrical equipment, such as a transformer, switch gear, power substation, business, home, or other structure. For example, as shown FIG. 1 , cable accessory 34C electrically and physically couples cable 32C to power substations 22A (e.g., to a transformer of the power substation 22A).

System 2 includes one or more electrical cable monitoring devices 33A-33L (collectively, monitoring devices 33) configured to monitor one or more conditions of an article of electrical equipment 20. For example, monitoring devices 33 may be configured to monitor conditions of power substations 22, electrical cables 32, cable accessories 34, or other type of electrical equipment 20. Monitoring devices 33 may be configured to attach or otherwise couple to electrical cables 32 and/or cable accessories 34. In some examples, monitoring devices 33 may be integrated within another device, such as cable accessories 34, or may be a separate (e.g., stand-alone) device. In the example of FIG. 1 , cable accessories 34A, 34B, 34C, 34D, 34E, 34F, 34G, 34H, and 34I include monitoring devices 33A, 33B, 33C, 33D, 33E, 33F, 33G, 33H, and 33I, respectively, while monitoring device 33J is a stand-alone monitoring device monitoring power line 24D. Further, in the example of FIG. 1 , cable accessory 34K does not include a monitoring device.

Monitoring devices 33 include sensors that generate sensor data indicative of the operating characteristics of one or more electrical cables 32 and/or cable accessories 34 or the condition of electrical equipment. Sensors of monitoring devices 33 may include temperature sensors (e.g., internal and/or external to the cable accessory), partial discharge sensors, voltage and/or current sensors, among others. In some examples, monitoring device 33A includes one or more temperature sensors. For example, monitoring device 33A may include an internal temperature sensor to monitor temperatures inside an electrical cable 32 or cable accessory 34 and/or an external temperature monitor to monitor the temperature outside or on the surface of an electrical cable 32 or cable accessory 34.

Monitoring device 33 may include a partial discharge sensor to detect partial discharge events (e.g., within cable accessory 34A). As used herein, a partial discharge event refers to a current discharge that only partially bridges the gap between electrodes of an electrical cable (e.g., which may be caused by a gas discharge in a void of the electrical cable). Further example details of monitoring devices for sensing partial discharge events are described in U.S. Patent Application 62/729,363, entitled “ELECRICAL POWER CABLE MONITORING DEVICE INCLUDING PARTIAL DISCHARGE SENSOR,” filed Sep. 10, 2018, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. Monitoring device 33 may include a voltage and/or current sensor configured to measure the phase and/or magnitude of the voltage or current in an electrical cable 32 or cable accessory 34.

Monitoring devices 33 each include a power source or receives power from a power source. For example, monitoring device 33A may include a battery. As another example, monitoring device 33A may be coupled to a solar cell, wind turbine, or other renewable or non-renewable power source. Example details of monitoring devices having a protective shell are described in U.S. Patent Application 62/729,320, entitled “SUPPORT STRUCTURE FOR CABLE AND CABLE ACCESSORY CONDITION MONITORING DEVICES,’ filed Sep. 10, 2018, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety. Additional example details of monitoring devices and electrical equipment management systems are described in U.S. Patent Application 62/729,367, entitled “ELECTRICAL POWER CABLE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM HAVING ANALYTICS ENGINE WITH INTEGRATED MONITORING, ALERTING, AND PRE-FAULT EVENT PREDICTION,” filed Sep. 10, 2018, which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety.

In some examples, monitoring devices 33A may include a power harvesting device configured to harvest power from power line 24A. For example, the power harvesting device of monitoring device 33A may receive power via the electrical power carried by power line 24A, via a magnetic field produced by power line 24A, or via heat within power line 24A, cable accessory 34A, or other device that generates heat when coupled to power line 24A.

In general, monitoring devices 33 may be communicatively coupled to EEMS 6. In some examples, monitoring devices 33 may include a transceiver to communicate (e.g. via network 4) with EEMS 6. In some examples, monitoring devices 33 communicate with EEMS 6 via communication hubs 26 and/or gateways 28. For example, monitoring devices 33 may output data to gateways 28 and/or communication hubs 26 via power line communication. As another example, monitoring devices 33 may include wireless communication devices, such as WiFi®, Bluetooth®, or RFID devices, which may be read by a mobile device reader (e.g., a vehicle that includes a reader to communicate with monitoring device 33 as a vehicle drives around environment 8B). Monitoring devices 33 may communicate event data indicative of the health or status of electrical cables 32, cable accessories 34. Event data may include data indicative of the sensor data generated by sensors of the electrical equipment 20, device data for electrical equipment 20, analysis data, or a combination therein. For instance, data indicative of the sensor data may include at least a portion of the sensor data generated by one or more sensors of monitoring device 33A, a summary of the sensor data, conclusions or results of analyses performed on the sensor data, or a combination therein. Device data (also referred to as equipment data) may include identification data (e.g., a unique identifier corresponding to a particular article of electrical equipment 20), device type (e.g., transformer, joint, termination joint, etc.), an event timestamp, location data (e.g., GPS coordinates of the particular article of electrical equipment 20), manufacturing data (e.g., manufacturer, lot number, serial number, date of manufacture, etc.), installation data (e.g., date of installation, identity of an installer or installation team), consumer data (e.g., data identifying a quantity and/or type of consumers serviced by the line, addresses served by the line, and the like), power distribution data (e.g., a type of line, such as ultra-high voltage, high voltage, medium voltage, etc.), or a combination therein. In some examples, the event data includes analysis data, such as data indicating whether the electrical equipment is predicted to fail (e.g., whether a failure event is predicted to occur), a predicted or estimated remaining lifespan of the electrical equipment, confidence interval for the prediction, etc. In some examples, monitoring devices 33 may receive data from EEMS 6, communication hubs 26, gateways 28, and/or cable accessories 34. For example, EEMS 6 may transmit requests for sensor data, firmware updates, or other data to monitoring devices 33.

In some examples, monitoring devices 33 include a wireless transceiver configured to transmit data over a wireless network (e.g., WiFi®, Bluetooth®, Zigbee®, etc.). For example, as illustrated in FIG. 1 , monitoring devices 33A and 33B may be communicatively coupled to wireless communication hubs 26A and 26B, respectively. In this way, monitoring devices 33A and 33B may communicate with EEMS 6 via wireless communication hubs 26A, 26B. In some examples, monitoring devices 33A-33C may communicate with EEMS 6 via gateway 28. For example, monitoring device 33A may transmit data to monitoring device 33B, and monitoring device 33B may transmit data to monitoring device 33C (e.g., some or all of monitoring devices 33 may form a mesh network). Monitoring device 33C may transmit data from monitoring devices 33A-33C to gateway 28, which may forward the data from monitoring devices 33A-33C to EEMS 6.

Monitoring devices 33 may include a wired transceiver. For example, monitoring devices 33 may be configured to communicate with one another, with cable accessories 34, communication hubs 26, gateways 28, and/or EEMS 6 via powerline communication, or over copper or fiber communication lines. In other words, in some examples, monitoring devices 33 may include a transceiver configured to communicate over power lines 24. In this way, power lines 24 may transmit electrical power from a power source to power consumers, as well as transmit data between EEMS 6 and monitoring devices 33. Additional details of monitoring devices 33 are describes with reference to FIG. 3 .

One or more articles of electrical equipment 20 may be configured to perform analytics locally. In some examples, monitoring device 33A may analyze sensor data generated by the sensors of monitoring device 33A to determine a health of cable accessory 34A. Monitoring device 33A may determine a health of cable accessory 34A by determining whether cable accessory 34A is predicted to fail (e.g., experience a failure event) within a threshold amount of time, determine an estimated remaining lifespan, etc. Monitoring device 33A may output analysis data based on the results of the analysis. For example, the analysis data may include data indicative of a health of cable accessory 34A. Monitoring device 33A may output event data that includes the analysis data to EEMS 6 (e.g., via communication hub 26A, via monitoring device 33B and communication hub 26B, and/or via communication hubs 26B, 26C and gateway 28).

System 2 includes computing devices 16 by which users 18A-18N (collectively, users 18) may interact with EEMS 6 via network 4. For purposes of example, the end-user computing devices 16 may be laptops, desktop computers, mobile devices such as tablets, smart phones and the like.

Users 18 interact with EEMS 6 to control and actively manage many aspects of electrical equipment 20, such as accessing and viewing event records, analytics and reporting. For example, users 18 may review event data acquired and stored by EEMS 6. In addition, users 18 may interact with EEMS 6 to perform asset tracking and to schedule maintenance or replacement for individual pieces of electrical equipment 20, e.g., monitoring devices 33, cables 32 and/or cable accessories 34. EEMS 6 may allow users 18 to create and complete digital checklists with respect to the maintenance and/or replacement procedures and to synchronize any results of the procedures from computing devices 16 to EEMS 6.

Further, as described herein, EEMS 6 integrates an event processing platform configured to process hundreds, thousands, or even millions of concurrent streams of events from monitoring devices 33 that monitor respective articles of electrical equipment 20 (e.g., cable accessories 34). An underlying analytics engine of EEMS 6 applies historical data and models to the inbound streams to compute assertions, such as identified anomalies or predicted occurrences of failure events based on data from sensors of electrical equipment 20. Further, EEMS 6 provides real-time alerting and reporting to notify users 18 of any predicted events, anomalies, trends, and the like.

The analytics engine of EEMS 6 may, in some examples, apply analytics to identify relationships or correlations between sensor data, environmental conditions, geographic regions, or other factors and analyze the impact on failure events. In some examples, EEMS 6 may determine a health of one or more cables accessories 34 or other electrical equipment. For example, EEMS 6 may determine, based on the data acquired across populations of electrical equipment 20, circumstances that lead to, or are predicted to lead to, failure events.

In some examples, EEMS 6 may determine whether an article of electrical equipment 20 should be repaired or replaced, prioritize maintenance (e.g., repair or replacement) procedures, create work orders, assign individuals or crews to perform the maintenance procedures, etc. EEMS 6 may, according to some examples, recommend re-routing electrical power or automatically re-route electrical power based on the analysis results.

EEMS 6 may process data for one or more entities, such as power utilities. For example, EEMS 6 may receive event data from electrical equipment of a single power utility and may provide analytics and reporting for the single power utility. As another example, EEMS 6 may receive event data from multiple power utilities and provide analytics and reporting for each of the power utilities. By receiving data from multiple power utilities, EEMS 6 may provide more robust prediction capabilities, for example, by training machine learning models with a larger data set than individual power utilities each utilizing a separate EEMS 6.

In this way, EEMS 6 integrates comprehensive tools for managing electrical equipment 20 with an underlying analytics engine and communication system to provide data acquisition, monitoring, activity logging, reporting, and alert generation. Moreover, EEMS 6 provides a communication system for operation and utilization by and between the various elements of system 2. Users 18 may access EEMS 6 to view results on any analytics performed by EEMS 6 on data acquired from monitoring devices 33. In some examples, EEMS 6 may present a web-based interface via a web server (e.g., an HTTP server) or client-side applications may be deployed for computing devices 16 used by users 18.

In some examples, EEMS 6 may provide a database query engine for directly querying EEMS 6 to view acquired event (e.g., sensor) data and any results of the analytic engine, e.g., by the way of dashboards, alert notifications, reports and the like. That is, users 18, or software executing on computing devices 16, may submit queries to EEMS 6 and receive data corresponding to the queries for presentation in the form of one or more reports or dashboards. Such dashboards may provide various insights regarding system 2, such as baseline (“normal”) operation across environments 8, identifications of any anomalous environments and/or electrical equipment 20, identifications of any geographic regions within environments 2 for which unusual activity (e.g., failure events) has occurred or is predicted to occur, and the like.

As illustrated in detail below, EEMS 6 may simplify workflows for individuals charged with monitoring electrical equipment 20 for an entity or environment. That is, the techniques of this disclosure may enable active electrical equipment management and allow an organization to take preventative or correction actions with respect to particular pieces of electrical equipment.

As one example, the underlying analytical engine of EEMS 6 may be configured to compute and present metrics for electrical equipment within a given environment 8 or across multiple environments for an organization. For example, EEMS 6 may be configured to acquire data and provide aggregated failure metrics and predicted failure analytics across one or more environments 8. Furthermore, users 18 may set benchmarks for occurrence of any failure events, and EEMS 6 may track actual failure events relative to the benchmarks.

As another example, EEMS 6 may further trigger an alert if certain combinations of conditions are present, e.g., to accelerate examination or service of one or more articles of electrical equipment 20, such as one of cable accessories 34. In this manner, EEMS 6 may identify an individual article of electrical equipment 20 predicted to fail and prompt users 18 to inspect and/or replace the article of electrical equipment prior to failure of the article.

While EEMS 6 is described as including the analytics engine, in some examples, communication units 26, gateways 28, and/or monitoring devices 33 may perform some or all of the functionality of EEMS 6. For example, monitoring device 33A may analyze sensor data generated by sensors of one or more monitoring devices 33 (e.g., from monitoring device 33A itself, other monitoring devices, or a combination therein). Monitoring devices 33 may output (e.g., via communication units 26) conclusions, assertions, or results of the analysis to EEMS 6. Similarly, gateways 28 may receive data from a plurality of monitoring devices 33, analyze the data, and send messages to EEMS 6 and/or one or more monitoring devices 33.

In this way, an EEMS may monitor event data from monitoring devices to determine the health of the articles of electrical equipment and/or predicting whether an article of electrical equipment will fail. By determining the health or predicting whether an article of electrical equipment will fail, the EEMS may enable power utilities to more effectively determine where failures have occurred or are likely to occur and manage or prioritize repair or replacement of electrical equipment, which may prevent or reduce failure events in the power grid.

FIG. 2 is a block diagram providing an operating perspective of EEMS 6 when hosted as cloud-based platform capable of supporting multiple, distinct environments 8 each having a plurality of articles of electrical equipment 20. In the example of FIG. 2 , the components of EEMS 6 are arranged according to multiple logical layers that implement the techniques of the disclosure. Each layer may be implemented by one or more modules comprised of hardware, software, or a combination of hardware and software.

In FIG. 2 , monitoring devices 33, either directly or by way of communication hubs 26 and/or gateways 28, as well as computing devices 60, operate as clients 63 that communicate with EEMS 6 via interface layer 64. Computing devices 60 typically execute client software applications, such as desktop applications, mobile applications, and web applications. Computing devices 60 may represent any of computing devices 16 of FIG. 1 . Examples of computing devices 60 may include, but are not limited to, a portable or mobile computing device (e.g., smartphone, wearable computing device, tablet), laptop computers, desktop computers, smart television platforms, and servers, to name only a few examples.

As further described in this disclosure, monitoring devices 33 communicate with EEMS 6 (directly or via communication hubs 26 and/or gateways 28) to provide streams of data acquired from embedded sensors and other monitoring circuitry and receive from EEMS 6 alerts, configuration data, and other communications. Client applications executing on computing devices 60 may communicate with EEMS 6 to send and receive data that is retrieved, stored, generated, and/or otherwise processed by services 68A-68H (collectively, services 68). For instance, the client applications may request and edit event data including analytical data stored at and/or managed by EEMS 6. In some examples, the client applications may request and display aggregate event data that summarizes or otherwise aggregates numerous individual instances of failure events and corresponding data acquired from monitoring devices 33 and/or generated by EEMS 6. The client applications may interact with EEMS 6 to query for analytics data about past and predicted failure events. In some examples, the client applications may output (e.g., for display) data received from EEMS 6 to visualize such data for users of clients 63. As further illustrated and described in below, EEMS 6 may provide data to the client applications, which the client applications output for display in user interfaces.

Clients applications executing on computing devices 60 may be implemented for different platforms but include similar or the same functionality. For instance, a client application may be a desktop application compiled to run on a desktop operating system, or may be a mobile application compiled to run on a mobile operating system. As another example, a client application may be a web application such as a web browser that displays web pages received from EEMS 6. In the example of a web application, EEMS 6 may receive requests from the web application (e.g., the web browser), process the requests, and send one or more responses back to the web application. In this way, the collection of web pages, the client-side processing web application, and the server-side processing performed by EEMS 6 collectively provides the functionality to perform techniques of this disclosure. In this way, client applications use various services of EEMS 6 in accordance with techniques of this disclosure, and the applications may operate within various different computing environment (e.g., embedded circuitry or processor of a desktop operating system, mobile operating system, or web browser, to name only a few examples).

As shown in FIG. 2 , EEMS 6 includes an interface layer 64 that represents a set of application programming interfaces (API) or protocol interface presented and supported by EEMS 6. Interface layer 64 initially receives messages from any of clients 63 for further processing at EEMS 6. Interface layer 64 may therefore provide one or more interfaces that are available to client applications executing on clients 63. In some examples, the interfaces may be application programming interfaces (APIs) that are accessible over a network. Interface layer 64 may be implemented with one or more web servers. The one or more web servers may receive incoming requests, process and/or forward data from the requests to services 68, and provide one or more responses, based on data received from services 68, to the client application that initially sent the request. In some examples, the one or more web servers that implement interface layer 64 may include a runtime environment to deploy program logic that provides the one or more interfaces. As further described below, each service may provide a group of one or more interfaces that are accessible via interface layer 64.

In some examples, interface layer 64 may provide Representational State Transfer (RESTful) interfaces that use HTTP methods to interact with services and manipulate resources of EEMS 6. In such examples, services 68 may generate JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) messages that interface layer 64 sends back to the client application that submitted the initial request. In some examples, interface layer 64 provides web services using Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) to process requests from client applications. In still other examples, interface layer 64 may use Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) to process requests from clients 63. Upon receiving a request from a client application to use one or more services 68, interface layer 64 sends the data to application layer 66, which includes services 68.

Data layer 72 of EEMS 6 represents a data repository that provides persistence for data in EEMS 6 using one or more data repositories 74. A data repository, generally, may be any data structure or software that stores and/or manages data. Examples of data repositories include but are not limited to relational databases, multi-dimensional databases, maps, and hash tables, to name only a few examples. Data layer 72 may be implemented using Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) software to manage data in data repositories 74. The RDBMS software may manage one or more data repositories 74, which may be accessed using Structured Query Language (SQL). Data in the one or more databases may be stored, retrieved, and modified using the RDBMS software. In some examples, data layer 72 may be implemented using an Object Database Management System (ODBMS), Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) database or other suitable data management system.

Electrical equipment data 74A of data repositories 74 may include data corresponding to a plurality of articles of electrical equipment, such as cable accessories 34. In some examples, electrical equipment data 74A may include device or equipment data, manufacturing data, installation data, consumer data, power distribution data, among others. For example, electrical equipment data 74A may include, for each cable accessory of cable accessories 34, data identifying a date of manufacture, a date of installation, a location (e.g., GPS coordinates, street address, etc.), entity that installed the cable accessory, a unique identifier (e.g., serial number), a type of cable accessory, etc. For example, prior to joining electrical cables 32A and 32B of FIG. 1 with cable accessory 34A, an installer may scan (e.g., with one of computing devices 16, such as a mobile phone) a barcode on cable accessory 34A that includes device data representing a unique identifier, date of manufacture, and so forth, and may upload the device data to EEMS 6. In some instances, the mobile device may append data such as the current date as the date of installation and GPS coordinates to the device data, and may send the device data to EEMS 6, such that EEMS 6 may store the device data for cable accessory 34A in electrical equipment data 74A.

As shown in FIG. 2 , EEMS 6 also includes an application layer 66 that represents a collection of services 68 for implementing much of the underlying operations of EEMS 6. Application layer 66 receives data included in requests received from client devices 63 and further processes the data according to one or more of services 68 invoked by the requests. Application layer 66 may be implemented as one or more discrete software services executing on one or more application servers, e.g., physical or virtual machines. That is, the application servers provide runtime environments for execution of services 68. In some examples, the functionality interface layer 64 as described above and the functionality of application layer 66 may be implemented at the same server.

Application layer 66 may include one or more separate software services 68 (e.g., processes) that communicate with one another (e.g., via a logical service bus 70), as one example. Service bus 70 generally represents a logical interconnections or set of interfaces that allows different services to send messages to other services, such as by a publish/subscription communication model. For instance, each of services 68 may subscribe to specific types of messages based on criteria set for the respective service. When a service publishes a message of a particular type on service bus 70, other services that subscribe to messages of that type will receive the message. In this way, each of services 68 may communicate data to one another. As another example, services 68 may communicate in point-to-point fashion using sockets or other communication mechanism.

As shown in FIG. 2 , each of services 68 is implemented in a modular form within EEMS 6. Although shown as separate modules for each service, in some examples the functionality of two or more services may be combined into a single module or component. Each of services 68 may be implemented in software, hardware, or a combination of hardware and software. Moreover, services 68 may be implemented as standalone devices, separate virtual machines or containers, processes, threads or software instructions generally for execution on one or more physical processors. In some examples, one or more of services 68 may each provide one or more interfaces that are exposed through interface layer 64. Accordingly, client applications of computing devices 60 may call one or more interfaces of one or more of services 68 to perform techniques of this disclosure.

In accordance with techniques of the disclosure, services 68 may include an event processing platform including an event endpoint frontend 68A, event selector 68B, and event processor 68C. Event endpoint frontend 68A operates as a front-end interface for receiving and sending communications to monitoring devices 33 (e.g., directly or via communication hub 26, and/or gateways 28). In other words, event endpoint frontend 68A operates to as a front line interface to monitoring devices 33 deployed within environments 8 of FIG. 1 . In some instances, event endpoint frontend 68A may be implemented as a plurality of tasks or jobs spawned to receive individual inbound communications of event streams 69 from the monitoring devices 33 (e.g. integrated within cable accessories 34) carrying data sensed and captured by sensors of the monitoring devices 33. When receiving event streams 69, for example, event endpoint frontend 68A may spawn tasks to quickly enqueue an inbound communication, referred to as an event, and close the communication session, thereby providing high-speed processing and scalability. Each incoming communication may, for example, carry recently captured data representing sensed conditions, motions, temperatures, actions or other data, generally referred to as events. Communications exchanged between the event endpoint frontend 68A and the cable accessories 34 may be real-time or pseudo real-time depending on communication delays and continuity.

Event selector 68B operates on the stream of events 69 received from monitoring devices 33, communication hubs 26, and/or gateways 28 via frontend 68A and determines, based on rules or classifications, priorities associated with the incoming events. Based on the priorities, event selector 68B enqueues the events for subsequent processing by event processor 68C or high priority (HP) event processor 68D. Additional computational resources and objects may be dedicated to HP event processor 68D so as to ensure responsiveness to critical events, such as actual failure or predicted imminent failure of a cable accessory 34. Responsive to processing high priority events, HP event processor 68D may immediately invoke notification service 68E to generate alerts, instructions, warnings or other similar messages to be output to monitoring devices 33 or users 18 of computing devices 60. Events not classified as high priority are consumed and processed by event processor 68C.

In general, event processor 68C or high priority (HP) event processor 68D operate on the incoming streams of events to update event data 74B within data repositories 74. In general, event data 74B includes data indicative of sensor data obtained from monitoring devices 33 (e.g., integrated with cable accessories 34), device data for electrical equipment 20 of FIG. 1 , analysis data, or a combination therein. For example, in some instances, event data 74B may include entire streams of samples of data obtained from sensors of monitoring devices 33. In other instances, event data 74B may include a subset of such data, e.g., associated with a particular time period. As another example, event data 74B may include analysis data indicating results of analysis of sensor data performed by one or more of monitoring devices 33, communication hub 26, and/or gateway 28.

Event processors 68C, 68D may create, read, update, and delete event data stored in event data 74B. Event data may be stored in a respective database record as a structure that includes name/value pairs of data, such as data tables specified in row/column format. For instance, a name of a column may be “Accessory ID” and a value may be a unique identification number (e.g., unique identifier) corresponding to a particular article of electrical equipment 20 of FIG. 1 . An event record may include data such as, but not limited to: equipment identification, data acquisition timestamp(s), and data indicative of one or more sensed parameters.

Event selector 68B may direct the incoming stream of events to stream analytics service 68F, which is configured to perform in depth processing of the incoming stream of events to perform real-time analytics. Stream analytics service 68F may, for example, be configured to process and compare multiple streams of event data 74B with historical data and models 74C in real-time as event data 74B is received. In this way, stream analytics service 68F may be configured to detect anomalies, transform incoming event data values, or trigger alerts upon predicting a possible failure event (e.g., failure of an article of electrical equipment 20). Historical data and models 74C may include, for example, one or more trained models configured to predict whether a failure vent will occur, an expected remaining lifespan for one or more articles of electrical equipment 20, and/or prioritize maintenance (e.g., repair or replacement) of articles of electrical equipment. In addition, stream analytics service 68F may generate output for communicating to cable accessories 34 (e.g., via notification service 68E) or computing devices 60 (e.g., via notification service 68G or record management and reporting service 68G).

In this way, analytics service 68F processes inbound streams of events, potentially hundreds or thousands of streams of events, from monitoring devices 33 within environments 8 to apply historical data and models 74C to compute assertions, such as identified anomalies or predicted occurrences of imminent failure events based on conditions sensed by the sensors of the monitoring devices 33. Stream analytics service 68F may publish the assertions to notification service 68F and/or record management by service bus 70 for output to any of clients 63.

In this way, analytics service 68F may be configured as an active electrical equipment management system that predicts failure events (e.g., potentially imminent failures or failures likely to occur within a threshold amount of time) and provides real-time alerting and reporting. In addition, analytics service 68F may be a decision support system that provides techniques for processing inbound streams of event data to generate assertions in the form of statistics, conclusions, and/or recommendations on electrical equipment 20 for utilities, workers, and other remote users. For instance, analytics service 68F may apply historical data and models 74C to determine a probability of failure of one or more articles of electrical equipment 20 (e.g., cable accessories 34), prioritize repair and/or replacement of the article of electrical equipment, etc. Hence, analytics service 68F may maintain or otherwise use one or more models that provide risk metrics to predict failure events.

In some examples, analytics service 68F may generate user interfaces based on processing data stored by EEMS 6 to provide actionable data to any of clients 63. For example, analytics service 68F may generate dashboards, alert notifications, reports and the like for output at any of clients 63. Such data may provide various insights regarding baseline (“normal”) operation across environments 8 or electrical equipment 20 (e.g., cable accessories 34), identifications of any anomalous characteristics of electrical equipment 20 that may potentially cause a failure of at least a portion of the power grid within an environment 8, and the like.

According to aspects of this disclosure, as noted above, EEMS 6 may apply analytics to predict the likelihood of a failure event. Although other technologies can be used, in one example implementation, analytics service 68F utilizes machine learning when operating on event streams so as to perform real-time analytics. That is, analytics service 68F may include executable code generated by application of machine learning to training data of event streams and known failure events to detect patterns. The executable code may take the form of software instructions or rule sets and is generally referred to as a model that can subsequently be applied to event streams 69 for detecting similar patterns and predicting upcoming events. For example, analytics service 68F may determine a status or health (e.g., predicted remaining lifespan) of the respective article of equipment 20 (e.g., cable accessory 34A) or predict whether/when the respective article of electrical equipment 20 will experience a failure event. That is, EEMS 6 may determine the likelihood or probability of a failure event based on application historical data and models 74C to event data received from electrical equipment 20. For example, EEMS 6 may apply historical data and models 74C to event data from monitoring devices 33 in order to compute assertions, such as anomalies or predicted occurrences of imminent failure events based on sensor data, environmental conditions, and/or other event data corresponding to electrical equipment 20 monitored by monitoring devices 33.

EEMS 6 may apply analytics to identify relationships or correlations between sensed data from sensors of monitoring devices 33 monitoring electrical equipment 20, environmental conditions of environments in which electrical equipment 20 is located, a geographic region in which electrical equipment 20 is located, a type of electrical equipment 20, a manufacturer and/or installer of electrical equipment, among other factors. EEMS 6 may determine, based on the data acquired across populations of electrical equipment 20, conditions, possibly within a certain environment or geographic region, lead to, or are predicted to lead to, unusually high occurrences of failure events. EEMS 6 may generate alert data based on the analysis of the event data and transmit the alert data to computing devices 16 and/or monitoring device 33. Hence, according to aspects of this disclosure, EEMS 6 may determine event data of monitoring devices 33, generate status indications, determine performance analytics, and/or perform prospective/preemptive actions based on a likelihood of a failure event (e.g., scheduling maintenance or replacement).

Analytics service 68F may, in some example, generate separate models for different environments, geographic areas, types of electrical equipment, or combinations thereof. Analytics service 68F may update the models based on event data received from monitoring devices 33. For example, analytics service 68F may update the models for a particular geographic area, a particular type of electrical equipment, a particular environment, or combinations thereof based on event data received from monitoring devices 33. Alternatively, or in addition, analytics service 68F may communicate all or portions of the generated code and/or the machine learning models to monitoring devices 33, communication hubs 26, and/or gateways 28 for execution thereon so as to provide local alerting in near-real time.

Example machine learning techniques that may be employed to generate models 74C can include various learning styles, such as supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and semi-supervised learning. Example types of algorithms include Bayesian algorithms, Clustering algorithms, decision-tree algorithms, regularization algorithms, regression algorithms, instance-based algorithms, artificial neural network algorithms, deep learning algorithms, dimensionality reduction algorithms and the like. Various examples of specific algorithms include Bayesian Linear Regression, Boosted Decision Tree Regression, and Neural Network Regression, Back Propagation Neural Networks, the Apriori algorithm, K-Means Clustering, k-Nearest Neighbour (kNN), Learning Vector Quantization (LVQ), Self-Organizing Map (SOM), Locally Weighted Learning (LWL), Ridge Regression, Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO), Elastic Net, and Least-Angle Regression (LARS), Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Principal Component Regression (PCR).

EEMS 6 may initially train models 74C based on a training set of event data and, in some examples, on data for corresponding failure events. As further example description, EEMS 6 may select a training set comprising a set of training instances, each training instance comprising an association between event data and a failure event. EEMS 6 may, for each training instance in the training set, modify, based on particular event data and a particular failure event of the training instance, one or more of models 74C to change a likelihood predicted by the models for the particular failure event in response to subsequent event data applied to the models 74C. In some examples, the training instances may be based on real-time or periodic data generated while EEMS 6 managing data for one or more articles of electrical equipment and/or work environments. As such, one or more training instances of the set of training instances may be generated from use of one or more articles of electrical equipment 20 after EEMS 6 performs operations relating to the detection or prediction of a failure event for an article of electrical equipment 20.

By training a model based on the training set, analytics service 68F may apply the model to the event data and generate higher probabilities or scores for failure events that correspond to training feature sets that are more similar to the particular feature set. In the same way, analytics service 68F may apply the model the event data and generate lower probabilities or scores for failure events that correspond to training feature sets that are less similar to the particular feature set. Accordingly, analytics service 68F may train one or more models 74C, receive event data from one or more monitoring devices 33 monitoring respective articles of electrical equipment 20, and output one or more probabilities or scores that indicate likelihoods of failure events based on the received event data vector.

In some examples, analytics service 68F may train one or models 74C based on sensor data generated by sensors of monitoring devices 33. For example, analytics service 68F may determine that temperature is predictive of impending failure based on training data. For instance, arcing, partial discharge, connector resistance increase, tracking, and other processes may cause an increase in temperature the leads to a failure event. As another example, analytics service 68F may determine based on the training data that acoustic emissions (e.g., arcing, partial discharge, and gas release) are related to failure events. As another example, analytics service 68F may determine that electromagnetic emissions (e.g., produced by partial discharge and arcing) and/or the current and/or voltage on the line can also provide an indication of failure events. As another example, analytics service 68F may determine, based on the training data, that temperature alone is not indicative of failure except when the damage progresses to near-complete failure (e.g., since high temperature can be due to high current). Rather, analytics service 68F determines based on the training data that the life-expectancy and failure of electrical equipment 20 is based at least in part line current of cables 32 and temperature of cable accessories 34. In some examples, analytics service 68F may determine a relationship between the line current of cables 32 and the temperature of cable accessories 34 based on direct current measurements (e.g., through a power harvesting coil, the inductive communication coil, or a separate inductive coil of cable accessories 34). As another example, analytics service 68F may, based on the training data, that a difference between the temperature of a cable (e.g., cable 32A) and temperature of a corresponding cable accessory to which the cable is directly coupled (e.g., accessory 34A) is indicative of damage to cable accessory 34A, the life-span of cable accessory 34A, and/or whether or when cable accessory 34A is predicted to experience a failure event.

In some examples, analytics service 68F trains the one or more models 74C based on failure events for articles of electrical equipment 20 and/or work environment having similar characteristics (e.g., of a same type). In some examples the “same type” may refer to identical but separate instances of articles of electrical equipment. In other examples the “same type” may not refer to identical instances of electrical equipment. For instance, although not identical, a same type may refer to articles of electrical equipment in a same class or category of electrical equipment, same model of electrical equipment, or same set of one or more shared functional or physical characteristics, to name only a few examples. Similarly, a same type of environment may refer to identical but separate instances of work environment types. In other examples, although not identical, a same type may refer to an environment in a same class or category of environments, such as “below ground electrical cables”, “underwater electrical cables”, a particular US state, climate, among others.

In some examples, analytics service 68F may predict a failure event based at least in part on application of models 74C to event data 69, such as sensor data generated by monitoring devices 33 monitoring articles of electrical equipment 20. For example, analytics service 68F may apply one or more models 74C to sensor data indicative of temperature, acoustic emissions, electromagnetic emissions, current, voltage, or any combination therein to determine a health status (e.g., predicted remaining lifespan) of electrical equipment 20 and/or predict failure events of electrical equipment 20. In some examples, analytics service 68F may train models 74C based on data from multiple sensors and may apply one or models 74C to sensor data from multiple different sensors to more accurately predict the health status of a given article of electrical equipment and whether or when the article of electrical equipment 20 will fail.

Analytics service 68F may apply one or more models 74C to sensor data and other event data to determine a health status of an article of electrical equipment 20 and/or whether or when the article of electrical equipment will fail. In some examples, analytics service 68F may apply one or more models 74C to sensor data and device data to predict health status and/or failure events. For example, analytics service 68F may predict whether cable accessory 34A will fail based on sensor data and a type of cable accessory 34A. For instance, analytics service 68F may determine that cable accessories of a first type (e.g., joints performed via a “heat shrink”) have different failure patterns than cable accessories of a second type (e.g., joint performed via a “cold shrink”). As another example, analytics service 68F may determine that cable accessories 34 installed by one installer or installed in one geographic location have different failure patterns that cable accessories 34 installed by a different installer or geographic location.

According to aspects of this disclosure, EEMS 6 may schedule maintenance (e.g., repair or replacement) operations of electrical equipment 20 based on event data. For example, analytics service 68F may predict a remaining lifespan for cable accessory 34A, determine the predicted remaining lifespan for cable accessory 34A is less than a threshold lifespan, and schedule a replacement operation for cable accessory 34A based on such data. As another example, analytics service 68F may rank maintenance operations for a plurality of articles of electrical equipment, for example, based on the predicted remaining lifespan, confidence of the prediction, importance of the various articles of electrical equipment (e.g., quantity of customers served by each article), among others. In some examples, analytics service 68F may automatically order replacement electrical equipment 20 based on one or more models 74C.

Additionally or alternatively, according to aspects of this disclosure, event data from monitoring devices 33 may be used to determine alerts and/or actively control operation of electrical equipment 20. For example, EEMS 6 may re-configure or re-route electrical power to transmit power over another electrical line (e.g., 24B of FIG. 1 ) in response to predicting imminent failure of electrical equipment along a particular line (e.g., 24A of FIG. 1 ). As another example, analytics service 68F may output a notification (e.g., to computing devices 16) in response to determining a health status of electrical equipment 20 or predicting a failure event. For example, analytics service 68F may output a notification to one or more computing devices 16 via notification service 68E.

Again, EEMS 6 may determine the above-described performance characteristics and/or generate the alert data based on application of the event data to one or more models 74C. However, while the determinations are described with respect to EEMS 6, as described in greater detail herein, one or more other computing devices, such as cable accessories 34, communication hubs 26, and/or gateways 28 may be configured to perform all or a subset of such functionality.

Record management and reporting service 68G processes and responds to messages and queries received from computing devices 60 via interface layer 64. For example, record management and reporting service 68G may receive requests from client computing devices for event data related to individual articles electrical equipment 20, groups of articles of electrical equipment (e.g., types of articles), geographic regions of environments 8 or environments 8 as a whole. In response, record management and reporting service 68G accesses event data based on the request. Upon retrieving the event data, record management and reporting service 68G constructs an output response to the client application that initially requested the data. In some examples, the data may be included in a document, such as an HTML document, or the data may be encoded in a JSON format or presented by a dashboard application executing on the requesting client computing device. For instance, as further described in this disclosure, example user interfaces that include the event data are depicted in the figures.

As additional examples, record management and reporting service 68G may receive requests to find, analyze, and correlate event data (e.g., event data for one or more monitoring devices 33 monitoring respective articles of electrical equipment 20). For instance, record management and reporting service 68G may receive a query request from a client application for event data 74B over a historical time frame, such as a user can view event data over a period of time and/or a computing device can analyze the event data over the period of time.

In example implementations, services 68 may also include security service 68H that authenticate and authorize users and requests with EEMS 6. Specifically, security service 68H may receive authentication requests from client applications and/or other services 68 to access data in data layer 72 and/or perform processing in application layer 66. An authentication request may include credentials, such as a username and password. Security service 68H may query security data 74E to determine whether the username and password combination is valid. Security data 74E may include security data in the form of authorization credentials, policies, and any other data for controlling access to EEMS 6. As described above, security data 74E may include authorization credentials, such as combinations of valid usernames and passwords for authorized users of EEMS 6. Other credentials may include device identifiers or device profiles that are allowed to access EEMS 6.

Security service 68H may provide audit and logging functionality for operations performed at EEMS 6. For instance, security service 68H may log operations performed by services 68 and/or data accessed by services 68 in data layer 72. Security service 68H may store audit data such as logged operations, accessed data, and rule processing results in audit data 74D. In some examples, security service 68H may generate events in response to one or more rules being satisfied. Security service 68H may store data indicating the events in audit data 74D.

In general, while certain techniques or functions are described herein as being performed by certain components, e.g., EEMS 6 or monitoring devices 33, it should be understood that the techniques of this disclosure are not limited in this way. That is, certain techniques described herein may be performed by one or more of the components of the described systems. For example, in some instances, monitoring devices 33 may have a relatively limited sensor set and/or processing power. In such instances, gateway 28 and/or EEMS 6 may be responsible for most or all of the processing of event data, determining the likelihood of a failure event, and the like. In other examples, monitoring devices 33, communication hubs 26, and/or gateways 28 may have additional sensors, additional processing power, and/or additional memory, allowing such devices to perform additional techniques. Determinations regarding which components are responsible for performing techniques may be based, for example, on processing costs, financial costs, power consumption, or the like.

FIG. 3 is a conceptual diagram of an electrical cable accessory 340 configured to electrically and physically couple two electrical cables 350A and 350B (collectively, electrical cables 350), in accordance with various techniques of this disclosure. Cable accessory 340 may electrically and physically couple electrical cable 350A and electrical cable 350B. Cable accessory 340 may be an example of cable accessories 34 of FIG. 1 and electrical cables 350A, 350B may be examples of electrical cables 350 of FIG. 1 .

In the example of FIG. 3 , electrical cable 350A includes a plurality of concentric (e.g., cylindrical) layers, such as central conductor 352, conductor screen 354, insulation 356, insulation screen 358, shield 360 (also referred to as sheath 360), and jacket 362. However, in some examples, electrical cables 350 may include more or fewer layers. Electrical cable 350B may include a similar plurality of layers. It should be understood that the layers of cables 350 are not necessarily drawn to scale. Electrical cables 350 may be configured for AC and/or DC power transmission.

Electrical cables 350 may transmit voltages of 11 kV, 33 kV, 66 kV, 360 kV, as a few example voltages. In some instances, electrical cables 350 transmit electrical power between a power source and substation may transmit voltages of 360 kV or more, which may be considered a “transmission level voltage”. In some examples, electrical cables 350 transmit voltages between 33 kV and 360 kV, such as 66 kV or 33 kV, which may be considered “subtransmission-level voltages,” and may provide electrical power from a power source to an end-user or customer (e.g., customers utilizing a relatively large amount of power). As another example, electrical cables 350 that transmit electrical power between a distribution substation and a distribution transformer may transmit voltages less than 33 kV, which may be considered “distribution-level voltages.” Electrical cables 350 may also transmit electrical power between a distribution substation or distribution transformer (e.g., a pad-mount transformer or pole-mount transformer) and end-users or consumers (e.g., homes and businesses) and may transmit voltages between 360 volts and 240 volts, at such voltages electrical cables 350 may be called “secondary distribution lines.”

Central conductor 352 includes a conductive material, such as copper or aluminum. In some examples, central conductor 352 includes a single solid conductor or a plurality of stranded conductors. A diameter or thickness of the central conductor 352 is based on the current that electrical cables 350 is designed to transmit or conduct. In other words, the cross-sectional area of central conductor 352 is based on the current that electrical cables 350 are designed to transmit. For example, central conductor 352 may be configured to transmit currents of 1,000 amperes or more.

Conductor screen 354 may include a semi-conductive polymer, such as carbon black loaded polymer. The semi-conductive polymer may have a bulk resistivity in a range from approximately 5 to approximately 100 ohm-cm. Conductor screen 354 may be physically and electrically coupled to central conductor 352. In the example of FIG. 3 , conductor screen 354 is disposed between central conductor 352 and insulation 356. Conductor screen 354 may provide a continuous conductive surface around the exterior of central conductor 352, which may reduce or eliminate sparking that might otherwise be created by central conductor 352.

In some examples, insulation 356 includes polyethylene, such as a cross-linked polyethylene (which may be abbreviated as PEX, XPE, or XLPE) or an ethylene propylene rubber (which may be abbreviated as EPR). A diameter or thickness of the insulation 356 is based on the voltage that electrical cables 350 is designed to transmit or conduct.

Insulation screen 358 may include a semi-conductive polymer similar to conductor screen 354. In the example of FIG. 3 , insulation screen 358 is disposed between insulation 356 and shield 360. Insulation screen 358 may be coupled to insulation 356. In some examples, insulation screen 358 is electrically coupled to shield 360.

Shield 360 may include a conductive material, such as a metal foil or film or wires. In some examples, shield 360 may be referred to as a “earth ground conductor.”

As illustrated in FIG. 3 , jacket 362, also referred to as an “oversheath,” is an outer layer of electrical cables 350. Jacket 362 may be a plastic or rubber polymer, such as polyvinyl chloride (PVC), polyethylene (PE), or ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM).

Electrical cables 350 may include additional layers, such as a swellable or water blocking material placed within the conductor strands (e.g., a strand fill) or between various layers within electrical cables 350.

According to aspects of this disclosure, cable accessory 340 includes a control unit 300 configured to monitor the health of cable accessory 340, cable, and/or electrical equipment (e.g., equipment near accessory 340). Monitoring device 300 may be an example of monitoring devices 33 of FIG. 1 . In some examples, control unit 300 includes at least one processor 302, a communication unit 304, a power source 306, one or more sensors 308, and a storage device 310. FIG. 3 illustrates one example of a cable accessory 340. Many other examples of cable accessory 340 may be used in other instances and may include a subset of the components included in example cable accessory 340 or may include additional components not shown example cable accessory 340 in FIG. 3 .

Cable accessory 340 includes one or more power sources 306 to provide power to components shown in cable accessory 340. In some examples, power sources 306 include a primary power source to provide electrical power and a secondary, backup power source to provide electrical power if the primary power source is unavailable (e.g., fails or is otherwise not providing power). In some examples, power source 306 includes a battery, such as a Lithium Ion battery. As another example, power source 306 may include a power harvesting device or circuit configured to derive power from an external source. Power source 306 may include a power harvesting circuit configured to harvest power from electrical cables 350. For example, electrical cables 302 generate a magnetic field when current flows through electrical cables 302. Power source 306 may include a circuit that generates a current based on the magnetic field, such that the current generated by power source 306 may provide electrical power to control unit 300. In some examples, power source 306 may include a piezoelectric power harvesting device, thermoelectric power harvesting device, photovoltaic harvesting device, or any other power harvesting device.

One or more processors 302 may implement functionality and/or execute instructions within cable accessory 340. For example, processors 302 may receive and execute instructions stored by storage device 310. These instructions executed by processors 302 may cause cable accessory 340 to store and/or modify information, within storage devices 310 during program execution. Processors 302 may execute instructions of components, analytics engine 318, to perform one or more operations in accordance with techniques of this disclosure. That is, analytics engine 318 may be operable by processor 302 to perform various functions described herein.

One or more communication units 304 of cable accessory 340 may communicate with external devices by transmitting and/or receiving data. For example, cable accessory 340 may use communication units 304 to transmit and/or receive radio signals on a radio network such as a cellular radio network. Examples of communication units 304 include a network interface card (e.g. such as an Ethernet card), an optical transceiver, a radio frequency transceiver, a GPS receiver, or any other type of device that can send and/or receive information. Other examples of communication units 304 may include Bluetooth®, GPS, cellular (e.g., 3G, 4G), LPWAN, and Wi-Fi® radios. As another example, communications unit 304 may communicate with external devices by transmitting and/or receiving data via wired communication.

Communication units 304 may be configured to send and receive data via electrical cables 350 using power line communication (PLC) techniques. Communications unit 304 may enable power line communications over narrowband frequencies (e.g., approximately 500 kHz or lower) or broadband frequencies (e.g., approximately 1 MHz or higher). In contrast to utilizing inductive coupling (which may be costly, heavy, and challenging to install), communication unit 304 may include a capacitive coupling circuit to inject data into, and extract data from, electrical cables 350.

Control unit 300 includes one or more sensors 308 configured to generate sensor data that is indicative of one or more conditions of cable accessory 340. Examples of sensors 308 include temperature sensors (e.g., internal and/or external to the cable accessory), partial discharge sensors, voltage and/or current sensors, among others. Sensors 308 may be attached on, inside, or near the cable accessory 340. In some examples, sensors 308 include one or more temperature sensors, such as an internal temperature sensor to monitor the temperature inside cable accessory 340 and/or an external temperature monitor to monitor the temperature outside or on the surface of cable accessory 34. Sensors 308 may include a partial discharge sensor to detect partial discharges within cable accessory 340. As another examples, sensors 308 may include a voltage and/or current sensor configured to measure the phase and/or magnitude of the voltage or current in cable accessory 340.

One or more storage devices 310 may store information for processing by processors 302. In some examples, storage device 310 is a temporary memory, meaning that a primary purpose of storage device 310 is not long-term storage. Storage device 310 may be configured for short-term storage of information as volatile memory and therefore not retain stored contents if deactivated. Examples of volatile memories include random access memories (RAM), dynamic random access memories (DRAM), static random access memories (SRAM), and other forms of volatile memories known in the art.

Storage device 310 may, in some examples, also include one or more computer-readable storage media. Storage device 310 may be configured to store larger amounts of information than volatile memory. Storage device 310 may further be configured for long-term storage of information as non-volatile memory space and retain information after activate/off cycles. Examples of non-volatile memories include, flash memories, or forms of electrically programmable memories (EPROM) or electrically erasable and programmable (EEPROM) memories. Storage device 830 may store program instructions and/or data associated with components such as analytics engine 318.

In the example of FIG. 3 , storage devices 310 include electrical equipment data repository 312, event data repository 314, models repository 316, and analytics engine 318. Data repositories 312, 314, and 316 may include relational databases, multi-dimensional databases, maps, and hash tables, or any data structure that stores data. In some examples, electrical equipment data repository 312 may be similar to, and may include data similar to, electrical equipment data repository 74A of FIG. 2 . Likewise, event data repository 314 may be similar to, and may include data similar to, event data 74B as described in FIG. 2 .

According to aspects of this disclosure, analytics engine 318 may be operable by one or more processors 302 to perform one or more actions based on the sensor data generated by sensors 308. Analytics engine 318 may be similar to and may include all or a subset of the functionality of, stream analytics engine 68F of FIG. 2 .

In some examples, analytics engine 318 may determine a health of cable accessory 340 based at least in part on the sensor data generated by one or more of sensors 308. For example, analytics engine 318 may apply one or more rules (e.g., stored within models repository 316) to the sensor data generated by one or more of sensors 308 to determine the health of cable accessory 340. The rules may be preprogrammed or learned, for example, via machine learning. According to some examples, models data store 316 includes rules trained based at least in part on event data collected from a plurality of cable accessories 34 and known failure events. In such examples, analytics engine 318 may train the one or more models in models repository 316 based on event data within event data repository 314. As another example, control unit 300 may receive data representing one or more models from EESR 6 of FIGS. 1 and 2 and may store the models in models repository 316.

Analytics engine 318 may determine the health of cable accessory 340 by predicting, based at least in part on the rules and the sensor data, whether cable accessory 340 will experience a failure event within a predetermined amount of time. For instance, analytics engine 318 may predict whether cable accessory 340 will fail within a predetermined amount of time by applying one or more models of models repository 316 to the sensor data. As one example, analytics engine 318 may apply models of models repository 316 to sensor data stored in event data repository 314. For example, analytics engine 318 may receive temperature data from a temperature sensor indicating a temperature within cable accessory 340 and apply models of models repository 316 to the temperature data. Analytics engine 318 may determine, based on the temperature data and models of models repository 316, that the temperature is within a normal temperature range, such that analytics engine 318 may determine that the health of cable accessory 340 is nominal, or normal. As another example, analytics engine 318 may apply models of models repository 316 to temperature data from a temperature sensor 308 and current data from a current sensor 308. For example, temperature alone may not be indicative of failure of cable accessories 34 because the temperature may increase as current increases. However, temperature and current may be indicative of potential cable accessory failures, for example, if the measured temperature is relatively high even when electrical cables 350 are carrying relatively little current. Thus, in some examples, analytics engine 308 may apply models of models repository 316 to temperature data and current data to determine the health of cable accessory 340.

In some examples, analytics engine 318 applies models of models repository 316 to event data repository 314 and other data, such as data within electrical equipment data repository 312. For example, analytics engine 318 may apply one or more models of models repository 316 to temperature data for cable accessory 340 that is stored within event data repository 314 and data stored within electrical equipment data repository 312 that indicates a type of cable accessory 340 to predict whether cable accessory 340 will experience a failure event (e.g., fail to conduct electrical power) within a predetermined amount of time.

Analytics engine 318 may perform various actions based on the health of cable accessory 340. For example, analytics engine 318 may output a notification (e.g., to EEMS 6) that includes data representing the health of cable accessory 340. For instance, the notification may indicate cable accessory 340 is operating normally. As another example, analytics engine 318 may output a notification indicating that cable accessory 340 is predicted to fail within a predetermined amount of time or indicating a time by which the cable accessory 340 is predicted to fail.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram illustrating an example gateway 28 that is configured to communicate with a cable accessory 34A and EEMS 6, in accordance with various techniques of this disclosure. FIG. 4 illustrates only one particular example of gateway 28. Many other examples of gateway 28 may be used in other instances and may include a subset of the components illustrated in FIG. 4 and/or may include additional components not shown in FIG. 4 .

As shown in FIG. 4 , gateway 28 includes one or more processors 402, one or more communication units 404, one or more power sources 406, and one or more storage devices 410. Processors 402, communication units 404, power sources 406, and storage components 410 may be similar to and include functionality similar to processors 302, communication units 304, power sources 306, and storage components 310 of FIG. 3 . Thus, a description of processors 402, communication units 404, power sources 406, and storage components 410 is omitted for brevity.

Gateway 28 may receive event data from a plurality of cable accessories 34 of one or more lines 24. The event data received by gateway 28 may include data indicative of sensor data generated by sensors of the respective monitoring devices (e.g., monitoring cable accessories), such as all or part of the sensor data, a summary of the sensor data, and/or analysis results based on the sensor data. Gateway 28 may store all or a subset of the event data in event data repository 414. In some examples, gateway 28 may receive notification from one or more cable accessories indicating a health status of the respective cable accessories 34.

Gateway 28 may act as an intermediary between monitoring devices 33 and EEMS 6. For example, gateway 28 may receive notifications from monitoring devices 33 and may send the notification to EEMS 6. As another example, gateway 28 may receive data from EEMS 6. For instance, gateway 28 may receive firmware updates from EEMS 6, and may send the firmware updates from EEMS 6 to monitoring devices 33. In some instances, gateway 28 may receive (e.g., from EEMS 6, monitoring devices 33, or both) equipment data for a plurality of cable accessories 34, installation data, manufacturing data, etc., and may store the equipment data in electrical equipment data repository 412.

In some examples, analytics engine 418 determines a health of respective one or more articles of electrical equipment 20 (e.g., cable accessories 34) based at least in part on the event data within event data repository 414. Analytics engine 418 may apply one or more rules to the event data to determine the health of respective cable accessories of cable accessories 34. The rules may be preprogrammed or learned. The rules may be stored within models repository 416. In some examples, analytics engine 418 may train one or more machine learning models based on event data within event data repository 414 and known failure events, and may store the trained models with models repository 416. As another example, gateway 28 may receive the rules from monitoring devices 33 or EEMS 6.

Analytics engine 418 may apply the rules to the event data to determine a health of one or more articles of electrical equipment 20, such as cable accessories 34. For example, analytics engine 418 may determine the health of cable accessory 34A by predicting whether cable accessory 34A will fail within a predetermined amount of time or predicting a remaining lifespan of cable accessory 34A.

Gateway 28 may output data to EEMS 6. In some examples, gateway 28 sends all or a portion of the event data from monitoring devices 33 to EEMS 6. As another example, gateway 28 may send notifications (e.g., generated by monitoring devices 33 and/or gateway 28) to EEMS 6. For instance, gateway 28 may output a notification indicating the remaining lifespan of a particular article of electrical equipment (e.g., cable accessory 34A) is less than a threshold amount of time or indicating the particular article of electrical equipment is predicted to fail.

FIG. 5 is an example graphical user interface on computing devices 16 of the electrical equipment management system 2 in FIG. 1 , in accordance with techniques of this disclosure. FIG. 5 is described with reference to electrical equipment management system 6 as described in FIGS. 1 and 2 .

EEMS 6 may output a graphical user interface 500 representing an environment, such as environment 8B, that includes a plurality of articles of electrical equipment. In the example of FIG. 5 , the articles of electrical equipment illustrated by graphical user interface 500 are described as cable accessories, however graphical user interface 500 may represent different types of electrical equipment. In the example of FIG. 5 , graphical user interface 500 include a graphical element (e.g., an icon, symbol, text, or other graphical element) for each respective cable accessory of a plurality of cable accessories within the environment. For example, graphical user interface 500 includes graphical icons 534A-534C, which each represent a respective cable accessory of cable accessories 34 of FIG. 1 .

Graphical user interface 500 may output data indicating the health of respective cable accessories. For example, graphical user interface 500 may include a legend 502 with different graphical elements representing different levels of health. In the example of FIG. 5 , graphical elements 534A and 534B indicate that the health of the cable accessories represented by the respective graphical elements 534A, 534B is “normal.” A normal health may indicate that the respective cable accessories are not predicted to fail within a threshold amount of time or are operating within typical operating parameters (e.g., within an expected temperature range, are experiencing a typical quantity of partial discharge events, etc.). As shown in the example of FIG. 5 , graphical element 534C indicates the health of the cable accessory (e.g., cable accessory 34C of FIG. 1 ) corresponding to graphical element 534C is not normal. In some examples, graphical element 534C may indicate cable accessory 34C is predicted to fail within a threshold amount of time.

In some examples, graphical user interface 500 may include additional data, such as a map indicating the location of one or more cable accessories. For example, graphical user interface 500 may include graphical elements 536A-536C indicating a number of customers (e.g., homes) served by the cable accessory.

Graphical user interface 500 may enabling users 18 of computing devices 16 to select a graphical element to receive additional information for the graphical element. For example, one or more computing devices 18 may output graphical user interface 500 and may receive a user input selecting graphical element 534C. Responsive to receiving data indicating the user selected graphical element 534C, EEMS 6 may output to computing devices 18 additional information for the corresponding cable accessory, such as data indicating the date of installation, location, type of cable accessory, quantity of customers served by the cable accessory, as a few examples. Further, EEMS 6 enable user 16 of computing device 18 to schedule maintenance or replacement of cable accessory 34C, order parts, re-route electrical power or otherwise adjust an operation of the grid, among others.

FIG. 6 is a flow chart illustrating example operations performed by one or more computing devices that are configured to monitor electrical utility equipment, in accordance with various techniques of this disclosure. FIG. 6 is described with reference to the system described in FIGS. 1 and 2 .

One or more computing devices, such as computing devices of EEMS 6 and/or processors of gateways 28, hubs 26 or monitoring devices 33, may obtain a first set of event data, referred to as training event data, from a plurality of cable accessories 34 (600). For example, the training event data may be obtained for training one or more learning models prior to deploying models for use within EEMS 6 and/or other devices, such as gateways 28, hubs 26 or monitoring devices 33. The training data may, for example, comprise known (i.e., previously identified, also referred to as “labelled”) failure events and associated sensed data. As another example, monitoring device 33A monitoring cable accessory 34A may receive event data from sensors of respective monitoring devices 33 monitoring cable accessories 34 within environment 8B for real-time training and improvement of the models. In some instances, the sensors of the respective monitoring devices 33 include temperature sensors, voltage sensors, partial discharge sensors, among others. According to some examples, each of monitoring devices 33 may output the training event data to gateway 28, EEMS 6, or both. The training event data may include data indicative of the sensor data (e.g., all or a subset of the sensor data, analysis results based on the sensor data, a summary of sensor data, etc.), equipment data, manufacturing data, installation data, consumer data, power distribution data, or a combination therein.

Responsive to receiving the training event data, one or more computing devices may train a model based at least in part on the event data from cable accessories 34 (602). For example, monitoring devices 33, gateway 28, and/or EEMS 6 may utilize machine learning techniques to train a model that receives training event data as input and outputs a predicted health of one or more articles of electrical equipment 20, such as electrical cables 32, cable accessories 34, or power substations 22. The one or more computing devices may train the model or models using supervised, unsupervised, or semi-supervised learning. According to some examples, the one or more computing devices may train one or more models based on known failure events. For example, EEMS 6 may apply a plurality of training event data corresponding to known failure events to generate one or more models used to predict a future failure event of a particular cable accessory when EEMS 6 subsequently receives event data for the particular cable accessory. In some examples, EEMS 6 may output one or more models to one or more cable accessories 34 or gateways 28. As another example, monitoring devices 33 and/or gateways 28 may train the models, and may output the models to other monitoring devices, gateways 28, or EEMS 6.

After training the one or more models, in some examples, one or more computing devices may receive a second set of event data, referred to as operational event data, from a particular monitoring devices, such as monitoring device 33A monitoring cable accessory 34A (604). For example, monitoring device 33A may receive operational event data, including sensor data from sensors of monitoring device 33A. As another example, monitoring device 33A may output the operational event data to another monitoring device, gateway 28 and/or EEMS 6.

One or more computing devices determine a health of cable accessory 34A based at least in part on the operational event data (606). In some examples, monitoring device 33A, 33B, or 33C, gateway 28, EEMS 6, or a combination therein may apply one or more models to the operational event data from monitoring device 33A to determine a health of cable accessory 34A. For example, monitoring device 33A may determine the health of cable accessory 34A locally or EEMS 6 may determine the health status of cable accessory 34.

Responsive to determining the health of cable accessory 34A, one or more computing devices perform at least one action (608). In some examples, monitoring device 33A performs an action by outputting a notification to EEMS 6 indicating the health of cable accessory 34A. For example, the notification may include data indicating that cable accessory 34A is predicted to fail within a predetermined amount of time. Similarly, gateway 28 and/or EEMS 6 may output a notification indicating the health of cable accessory 34A. As another example, EEMS 6 may perform an action by outputting, to one of computing devices 18, data corresponding to a graphical user interface that indicates a health of cable accessory 34A, such that one of computing devices 18 may display the graphical user interface. As yet another example, EEMS 6 schedule maintenance or replacement of cable accessory 34A.

FIGS. 7A-7B are conceptual diagrams illustrating an example cable accessory, in accordance with one or more aspects of this disclosure. FIGS. 7A-7B illustrate a plane view through a center of cable accessory 700 that includes a monitoring device 720. The monitoring device may be integrated into the cable accessory or can be part of a separate monitoring device that can be used with a conventional cable accessory.

Cable accessory 700 may be an example of cable accessories 34 of FIG. 1 . In the example of FIGS. 7A-7B, cable accessory 700 includes a monitoring device 720 and a plurality of generally concentric layers, such as connector 702, insulator 704, low side electrode 706, separator 708, ground conductor 710. In some examples, insulator 704, low side electrode 706, and separator 708, may collectively be referred to as a splice body 705, and may generally be coaxial with one another. It should be understood that the layers of cable accessory 700 are not necessarily drawn to scale. Cable accessory 700 may include fewer layers or additional layers not shown here.

Connector 702, which may be a high side electrode in certain configurations, may include a cylindrical body having a surface at a first end of the cylindrical body and a surface at a second end of the cylindrical body, the second end opposite the first end. The cylindrical body may include an outer surface connecting the first end and the second end of the cylindrical body. Each end of the cylindrical body may be configured to receive a respective electrical cable (e.g., electrical cable 32 of FIG. 1 ). For example, the first end and the second end of connector 702 may each include an aperture 703 configured to receive an electrical cable (e.g., central conductor 352 of electrical cables 32 of FIG. 3 , or central conductor 352 and conductor screen 354 of electrical cables 32 of FIG. 3 ). Apertures 703 may extend the entire length of connector 702, such that connector 702 includes a single aperture 703 or hollow region traversing from the surface at the first end of connector 702 to the surface of the second end of connector 702. As such, an installer coupling two electrical cables together may insert a central conductor of a first electrical cable into an aperture 703 at a first end of connector 702 and a central conductor of a second electrical cable into an aperture 703 at a second end of connector 702 to electrically couple the electrical cables.

In an alternative embodiment, the high side electrode can be the central conductor of one of the first and second electrical cables connected by connector 702.

While the monitoring device is described herein as a cable splice, one of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that the concepts of this monitoring device can be extended to other common cable accessories such as cable terminations, separable connectors, or other cable connection systems.

In this example, connector 702 includes a conductive material, such steel, copper, or aluminum. A diameter or thickness of the connector 702 may be based on the current that cable accessory 700 is designed to transmit or conduct and/or the gauge of electrical cables 32 that cable accessory 700 is configured to couple or connect. Connector 702 may couple two or more electrical cables 32 to conduct electrical power between a power utility and one or more consumers. In such examples, connector 702 may conduct electrical power at a line voltage, which may be called a main voltage. In other words, the voltage transmitted by connector 702 may equal to the voltage transmitted by the power utility or a fraction of the voltage transmitted by the power utility (e.g., as stepped up or down by one or more substations located between the power utility and cable accessory 700).

Insulator 704 may include a cylindrical tube made of an insulating material, such as an elastomeric rubber (e.g., ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM)). In some examples, a diameter or thickness of the insulator 704 is based on the voltage that cable accessory 700 and/or electrical cables 32 are designed to transmit or conduct.

Low side electrode 706 includes, in some examples, a semi-conductive material, such as a carbon filled polymer that matches the polymer used in the main cable insulation (e.g., a crosslinked polyethylene or ethylene propylene rubber (EPR) material). In some example, low side electrode 706 may be a conductive film deposited on an outer surface of insulator 704. Low side electrode 706 may electrically float relative to connector 702 or ground conductor 710. In other words, in some examples, low side electrode 706 may be electrically isolated from connector 702 and ground conductor 710. Stated another way, low side electrode 706 may be at a different potential than either connector 702 and ground conductor 710. For example, when connector 702 conducts AC current, an oscillating AC voltage in connector 702 may generate a magnetic field, which may in turn induce an AC current and voltage in low side electrode 706.

As illustrated in FIGS. 7C and 7D, in some examples, low side electrode 706 may include a plurality of sublayers or regions, such as low resistance region 707A and a comparatively high resistance region 707B. In some examples, low resistance region 707A is disposed between high resistance region 707B and separator 708. Low resistance region 707A may include a material with relatively low resistance compared to high resistance region 707B. In the example of FIG. 7C, low resistance region 707A is a continuous layer, such as a metallic foil. In the example of FIG. 7D, low resistance region 707A is not a continuous layer. For example, as illustrated in FIG. 7D, low resistance region 707A may be a metallic mesh. In examples where low side electrode 706 includes low resistance regions 707A and high resistance regions 707B, monitoring device 720 may be electrically connected to low resistance region 707A of low side electrode 706.

Ground conductor 710, which may also be referred to as conductor at earth ground 710. Ground conductor 710 may include a conductive material, such as copper or aluminum. In some examples, ground conductor 710 may include a wire mesh disposed on the exterior of cable accessory 700. During installation of cable accessory 700 (e.g., while coupling two electrical cables together), ground conductor 710 may be electrically coupled to shield 360 of FIG. 3 of the electrical cables being connected by the cable accessory.

In accordance with techniques of this disclosure, cable accessory 700 includes a separator 708, also referred to as high impedance separator 708, disposed between low side electrode 706 and ground conductor 710. Separator 708 may include an insulating material or relatively high resistance material that is not a perfect insulator. Separator 708 may electrically isolate low side electrode 706 and ground conductor 710. As described in more detail below, electrically separating low side electrode 706 and ground conductor 710 with separator 708 may enable monitoring device 720 to determine a health of cable accessory 700 (e.g., via sensors detecting partial discharge events or monitoring temperatures, voltages, and/or currents in low side electrode 706), harvest power from electrical cables 32, communicate with other computing devices (e.g., EEMS 6) via power line communication, or a combination therein.

Cable accessory 700 includes monitoring device 720. Monitoring device 720 is electrically coupled to low side electrode 706 and ground conductor 710. In some examples, monitoring device 720 is physically disposed between low side electrode 706 and ground conductor 710. However, in some examples, monitoring device 702 may be located in other locations, for example, on an exterior of cable accessory 700.

In an alternative embodiment, the monitoring device may be a separate device that can be disposed over, adjacent or near to cabler accessory 700. In yet another aspect, the monitoring device can be disposed at a mid-span location between cable connection points such that the monitoring device is connected to the low side electrode (e.g., semi-conductive layer) and the ground conductor at the midspan location.

Monitoring device 720 may include one or more processors 722, and at least one other device or circuit 723. Devices 723 may include one or more communications units 724, power source 725, one or more sensors 728, or a combination therein. Power supply 725 may include a battery or power harvesting device 726 (also referred to as power harvesting circuit 726).

As illustrated in FIG. 7A, control circuit 720 may include a single electrical connection to each of low side electrode 706 and ground conductor 710. In some examples, such as the example of FIG. 7B, monitoring device 720 may include multiple electrical connections to each of low side electrode 706 and ground conductor 710, such as separate electrical connections to communications units 724, power harvester 726, and sensors 728. Sensors 728 may include temperature sensors (e.g., internal and/or external to the cable accessory), partial discharge sensors, voltage and/or current sensors, among others. The sensors may be attached on, inside, or near the cable accessory 700.

In some examples, multiple devices 723 may utilize low side electrode 706. For example, devices 723 may utilize low side electrode 726 by dividing the time each device 723 is coupled to low side electrode 706, by sampling at different frequencies simultaneously, or a combination therein. Table 1 illustrates example frequencies that may be utilized for various operations or functions of devices 723.

TABLE 1 Function Frequency Range Power Harvesting 50/60 Hz Voltage Phase and 50/60 Hz Magnitude Measurement Power Line Communication 10-500 kHz Partial Discharge Detection     1 kHz to    1 GHz

In some examples, one or more of devices 723 may be continuously coupled to low side electrode 706. In other words, in some examples, at least one of devices 723 utilizes low side electrode 706 such that low side electrode 706 may have a 100% duty cycle. However, in some examples, a lower duty cycle can also be employed (e.g., in time sharing, at any given time, it may be that none of devices 723 are operating or utilizing low side electrode 706).

In operation, monitoring device 720 may include the functionality of monitoring devices 33 of FIG. 1 and 300 of FIG. 3 . Monitoring device 720 may determine the health of cable accessory 700. In some examples, monitoring device 720 determines the health of cable accessory 700 based on event data, such as the sensor data generated by sensors 728, device data, manufacturing data, installation data, or a combination therein. Monitoring device 720 may determine the health of cable accessory 700 by applying one or more models to the event data, for example, to predict whether the cable accessory 700 will fail within a predetermined amount of time. Responsive to determining the health of cable accessory 700, monitoring device 720 may output data indicative of the health of cable accessory 700, such as all or a portion of the sensor data, a summary of the sensor data, analysis results based on the sensor data, or a combination therein. In some examples, monitoring device 720 outputs the data to EEMS 6 of FIGS. 1-2 using wired communication techniques (e.g., power line communication) and/or wireless communication techniques (e.g., LTE, Bluetooth®, WiFi®). According to some examples, monitoring device 720 may output event data without determining a health of cable accessory 700. For instance, monitoring device 720 may output event data to gateway 28 and/or EEMS 6 and EEMS 6 and/or gateway 28 may determine the health of cable accessory 700 based on the event data.

By utilizing a low side electrode 706, cable accessory 700 may include a monitoring device 720 that includes a plurality of devices (e.g., sensors 728 and communications unit 724) that share the low side electrode 706, which may reduce the complexity and cost of cable accessory 700. In this way, monitoring device 720 may be relatively easy to install and may provide a relatively efficient, low cost, and simple means for monitoring cable accessory 700 and communicating with EEMS 6.

FIG. 8 is a conceptual block diagram illustrating an example monitoring device for a cable accessory, in accordance with one or more aspects of this disclosure. As illustrated in FIG. 8 , monitoring device 720 may include a plurality of devices 723, such as communication unit 724 and power harvester 726, that share the low side electrode in a time divided scheme. Monitoring device 720 may include a switch operable by one of processors 722. One or more of processors 722 may electrically disconnect a first device 723 (e.g., communications unit 724) from low side electrode 706 and connect a second device 723 (e.g., power harvester 726). Thus, monitoring device 720 may include a switch operable by one of processors 722, such that low side electrode 706 may be sequentially connected to various devices 723.

FIG. 9A is a conceptual diagram illustrating an example cable accessory configured to detect partial discharge events, in accordance with one or more aspects of this disclosure. FIG. 9B is an example circuit diagram of the example cable accessory of FIG. 9A. Monitoring device 720 may include one or more communication units and/or power sources as illustrated in FIGS. 7 , which are not shown in FIG. 9 for clarity and brevity. In the example of FIGS. 9 , cable accessory 700 includes partial discharge sensor 740. In some examples, partial discharge sensor 740 may detect partial discharge events via ultra-high frequency (UHF), transient earth voltage, high frequency current transformer (CT), or other means.

According to aspect of this disclosure, partial discharge sensor 740 may detect a charge generated by a partial discharge event as the charge flows from low side electrode 706 to ground conductor 710. In some examples, low side electrode 706 has a high impedance compared to the impedance through partial discharge sensor 740, such that the charge generated by the partial discharge event passes through partial discharge sensor 740. As another example, the impedance of alternative paths between the partial discharge event and ground conductor 710 may also be high enough to cause the charge generated by the partial discharge event through partial discharge sensor 740. Separating low side electrode 706 and ground conductor 710 via separator 708, and sharing low side electrode 706 with a plurality of devices (e.g., partial discharge sensor 740 and communications unit 724 shown in FIG. 7 ) of monitoring device 720 may increase the functionality of cable accessory 700 while potentially reducing the complexity and cost of cable accessory 700 and connections to electrical cables 32.

In some instances, partial discharge sensor 740 may count partial discharge events and may output partial discharge data indicating a discharge event has occurred, data indicating a quantity of discharge events detected within a predetermined amount of time (e.g., within the past five minutes), etc. In some examples, one or more processors 722 may determine a health of cable accessory 700 based at least in part on partial discharge data generated by partial discharge sensor 740. For example, one or more of processors 722 may apply a model to at least the partial discharge data and output a prediction of whether or when cable accessory 700 will fail.

Partial discharge events may emit energy over a wide frequency range and can be detected readily at frequencies that do not interfere with the functionality of other devices 723 of monitoring device 720 of cable accessory 700. Thus, in some examples, partial discharge sensor 740 may share low side electrode 706 with other devices 723 of monitoring device 720 by utilizing different frequencies from other devices 723. In some examples, partial discharge sensor 740 may share low side electrode 706 on a time basis with the devices 723 of monitoring device 720. It should be understood that partial discharge sensor 740 may not continuously measure partial discharge events. For example, partial discharge sensor 740 may utilize low side electrode 706 by time sharing or via a duty cycle that is less than 100%.

FIG. 10A is a conceptual diagram illustrating an example cable accessory configured to measure voltage, in accordance with one or more aspects of this disclosure. FIG. 10B is an example circuit diagram of the example cable accessory of FIG. 10A. Monitoring device 720 may include one or more communication units and/or power sources as illustrated in FIGS. 7 , which are not shown in FIG. 10 for clarity and brevity. In the example of FIGS. 10 , cable accessory 700 includes voltage sensor 742 which may be configured to determine the phase and/or magnitude of voltages in low side electrode 706. As illustrated in FIGS. 10A, 10B, voltage sensor 742 is electrically coupled to low side electrode 706 and ground conductor 710 and includes an impedance bridging the low side electrode 706 to the ground conductor 710, such that voltage sensor 742 may measure the voltage drop across this impedance.

Voltage sensor 742 may output voltage data indicating whether a voltage is present, the phase of the voltage, and/or the magnitude of voltage at low side electrode 706. In some examples, one or more processors 722 may determine a health of cable accessory 700 based at least in part on voltage data generated by voltage sensor 742. For example, one or more of processors 722 may apply a model to at least the voltage data generated by voltage sensor 742 and output a prediction of whether or when cable accessory 700 will fail.

In some examples, one or more of processors 722 of monitoring device 720 determine the health of cable accessory or predict whether/when cable accessory 700 based on voltage data from voltage sensor 742 and partial discharge data from partial discharge sensor 740. For example, processors 722 may apply a model to the voltage data and partial discharge data to predict when or whether cable accessory 700 will fail. As another example, voltage sensor 742 may determine the phase of the voltage and one or more processors may determine the health of cable accessory 700 by performing a phase-resolved partial discharge analysis by correlating partial discharge events with the voltage phase. In such examples, voltage sensor 742 may not be calibrated against a known voltage. In some instances, voltage sensor 742 may output voltage data indicating whether there is a voltage or not, such that voltage sensor 742 may not need to be calibrated.

FIG. 11A is a conceptual diagram illustrating an example cable accessory configured to harvest energy from electrical power transmitted in electrical cables, in accordance with one or more aspects of this disclosure. FIG. 11B is an example circuit diagram of the example cable accessory of FIG. 11A. Monitoring device 720 may include one or more communication units and/or sensors as illustrated in FIGS. 7 , which are not shown in FIG. 11 for clarity and brevity. In the example of FIGS. 11 , cable accessory 700 includes power harvesting device 726 which may be configured to harvest electrical power transmitted in electrical cables. For example, power harvester 726 harvests power from a power line as a power output to run one or more devices 723 of cable accessory 700, such as or processors 722 or communication units 724 shown in FIG. 7 . In some examples, power harvester 726 may capacitively harvest power from the power line (e.g., power line 24A of FIG. 1 ) to provide electrical current to monitoring device 720, which may provide a more stable source of power without using batteries (which would need to be replaced periodically) or using an inductive coupler (which would be relatively large and expensive). FIG. 11B illustrates an example circuit implementation of cable accessory 700 that includes power harvester 726. In some examples, the charge current between connector (e.g., high side electrode) 702 and ground conductor 710 may be expressed by the equation: I=VωC, where ω=angular frequency (e.g., 2*π*frequency), C=capacitance, and V=voltage. In an example where the voltage, V, on the transmission line is 7,000 volts and the capacitance, C, between the connector 702 and low side electrode 706 is 75 pF, then the charging current that can be extracted from the connector 702 to ground conductor 712 in this example is (7000V)*(2*π*60 Hz)*(75 pF)=0.2 mA. In some examples, a charging current of 0.2 mA may be sufficient to drive the functionality of monitoring device 720 of cable accessory 700, such as sensing, processing, and communication functionalities.

FIG. 12 illustrates an example circuit of the example power harvesting device 726. In the example of FIG. 12 , power harvesting device 726 includes an inverting buck boost topology implemented between the low side electrode 706 and ground conductor 710. AC current through low side electrode 706 flows to rectifier 750. Rectifier 750 converts the current to output DC current which charges capacitor 752. Comparator 754 compares the voltage at capacitor 752 to a first threshold voltage. When the voltage at capacitor 752 satisfies (e.g., is greater than or equal to) a threshold voltage, comparator 754 causes the switch 756 to close, thus discharging capacitor 752 into coil 758. Coil 758 charges the storage capacitor 760 until a second threshold voltage is reached. When the voltage in storage capacitor 760 satisfies the second threshold voltage, switch 756 is re-opened to re-charge capacitor 752. Current may flow from storage capacitor 760 to one or more processors 722 or other components of monitoring device 720, such as, one or more communication units 724 (shown in FIG. 7 ), one or more sensors 728 (shown in FIG. 7 ), and other components of monitoring device 720 of cable accessory 700.

FIG. 13A is a conceptual diagram illustrating an example cable accessory configured to communicate data via electrical cables, in accordance with one or more aspects of this disclosure. FIG. 13B is an example circuit diagram of the example cable accessory of FIG. 13A. Monitoring device 720 may include one or more sensors and/or power sources as illustrated in FIGS. 7 , which are not shown in FIG. 13 for clarity and brevity. In the example of FIGS. 13 , cable accessory 700 includes communication unit 724 which may be configured to send and receive data over electrical cables. In other words, communication unit 724 may send and receive data over power lines 24 of FIG. 1 using power line communication techniques. Communications unit 724 may enable power line communications over narrowband frequencies (e.g., approximately 500 kHz or lower) or broadband frequencies (e.g., approximately 1 MHz or higher). For example, communications unit 724 may output (e.g., to EEMS 6) data indicative of a health of cable accessory 700.

Communication unit 724 be electrically coupled to low side electrode 706 and ground conductor 710 to perform power line communications. As shown in the example of FIG. 13B, communication unit 724 may utilize capacitive coupling to inject data into, and extract data from, connector 702 and a central conductor of a power cable (e.g., cables 32 of power lines 24) of FIG. 1 ). For example, communication unit 724 may output or transmit data by modulating a signal between the low side electrode 706 and ground conductor 710. In contrast to utilizing inductive coupling (which may be costly, heavy, and challenging to install), communication unit 724 may be relatively simple and low-cost to install. Further, communication unit 724 may share low side electrode 706 with other devices 723 of monitoring device 720 (e.g., as shown in FIG. 7 ), which may reduce complexity and cost of cable accessory 700.

FIG. 14 is a conceptual diagram illustrating an example cable accessory 800 electrically and physically coupling electrical cable 832A to electrical cable 832B. Cable accessory 800 may be an example of cable accessory 700 of FIGS. 7-11 . Electrical cables 832A-832B (collectively, electrical cables 832) may be examples of electrical cables 32 described with reference to FIGS. 1-3 . It should be understood that the layers of electrical cables 832 and cable accessory 800 are not necessarily drawn to scale.

In the example of FIG. 14 , electrical cables 832 include a plurality of concentric layers, such as cable central conductor 852, cable insulation 856, cable insulation screen 858, cable shield 860 (also referred to as sheath 860), and cable jacket 862. However, in some examples, electrical cables 832 may include more or fewer layers. Electrical cable 832B may include a similar plurality of layers. Cable central conductor 852, cable insulation 856, cable insulation screen 858, cable shield 860, and cable jacket 862 may correspond to central conductor 352, insulation 356, insulation screen 358, shield 360, and jacket 362 of FIG. 3 , respectively, such that a description of the respective layers is omitted here for brevity.

As illustrated in FIG. 14 , cable accessory 800 includes, in some examples, a monitoring device 820 and a plurality of generally concentric layers, such as connector 802, insulator 804, low side electrode 806, separator 808, ground conductor 810, and jacket 812. Cable accessory 800 may include additional or fewer layers. Connector 802, insulator 804, low side electrode 806, separator 808, ground conductor 810 may correspond to connector 702, insulator 704, low side electrode 706, separator 708, ground conductor 710 of FIGS. 7 , respectively, such that a description of the respective layers is omitted for brevity. Jacket 812 may be a plastic or rubber polymer, such as polyvinyl chloride or polyethylene.

Insulator 804 may include a plurality of sub-layers, such as “high-K” insulator 814 and splice insulator 816. High-K insulator 814 may include a material with a relatively high dielectric constant compared to the material of splice insulator 816. In some examples, cable accessory 800 includes a splice electrode 809 concentrically covering connector 802. For example, splice electrode 809 may include an electrically conductive material disposed between connector 802 and insulator 804.

Cable accessory 800 may include an extruded cable splice body 805 (e.g., a “push-on” splice body). In some instances, splice body 805 is an integrated unit that includes splice electrode 809, insulator 804, low side electrode 806, and separator 808 in an integrated unit. In other words, according to some examples, splice electrode 809, insulator 804, low side electrode 806, and separator 808 may form a single, cohesive structure or device, which may be attached or installed with other layers to form a cable accessory 800. Splice body 805 may include an integrated monitoring device 820.

Upon installation, cable accessory 800 electrically and physically couples electrical cables 832A and 832B. In the example of FIG. 14 , connector 802 electrically couples the central conductor 852 of electrical cables 832A and 832B. As shown in FIG. 14 , ground conductor 810 electrically couples cable shield 860 of electrical cable 832A with the cable shield 860 of electrical cable 832B. Low side electrode 806 may be electrically isolated from connector 802 and ground conductor 810. In other words, during operation, central conductors 852 and connector 802 may be at a high potential (e.g., thousands or hundreds of thousands of volts), the potential of cable shield 860 and ground conductor 810 may be at a ground potential, and the low side electrode 806 may float between the ground potential and the high voltage potential. Monitoring device 820 is electrically coupled to ground conductor 810 and low side electrode 806 via electrical connections 818A, 818B, respectively (collectively, electrical connections 818).

In operation, monitoring device 820 may include the functionality of monitoring device 720 of FIGS. 7-13 . In some examples, monitoring device 820 includes one or more processors, one or more sensors, one or more communication units, one or more power harvesting devices, or a combination therein. For example, monitoring device 820 may include one or more sensors configured to generate sensor data indicative of the health of cable accessory 800. Monitoring device 820 may determine the health of cable accessory 800 based at least in part on the sensor data. In some examples, monitoring device 820 determines the health of cable accessory 800 based on event data, such as the sensor data, device data, manufacturing data, installation data, or a combination therein. Monitoring device 820 may determine the health of cable accessory 800 by applying one or more models to the event data, for example, to predict whether the cable accessory 800 will fail within a predetermined amount of time. Responsive to determining the health of cable accessory 800, monitoring device 820 may output data indicative of the health of cable accessory 800, such as all or a portion of the sensor data, a summary of the sensor data, analysis results based on the sensor data, or a combination therein. In some examples, monitoring device 820 outputs the data to EEMS 6 of FIGS. 1-2 using wired communication techniques (e.g., power line communication) and/or wireless communication techniques (e.g., LTE, Bluetooth®, WiFi®). According to some examples, monitoring device 820 may output event data without determining a health of cable accessory 800. For instance, monitoring device 820 may output event data to gateway 28 and/or EEMS 6 and EEMS 6 and/or gateway 28 may determine the health of cable accessory 800 based on the event data.

FIG. 15 is a conceptual diagram illustrating an example cable accessory 900 electrically and physically coupling electrical cable 932A to electrical cable 932B. Cable accessory 900 may be an example of cable accessory 700 of FIGS. 7-11 . Electrical cables 932A-932B (collectively, electrical cables 932) may be examples of electrical cables 32 described with reference to FIGS. 1-3 . It should be understood that the layers of electrical cables 932 and cable accessory 900 are not necessarily drawn to scale.

In the example of FIG. 15 , electrical cables 932 include a plurality of concentric layers, such as cable central conductor 952, cable insulation 956, cable insulation screen 958, cable shield 960 (also referred to as sheath 960), and cable jacket 962. However, in some examples, electrical cables 932 may include more or fewer layers. Electrical cable 932B may include a similar plurality of layers. Cable central conductor 952, cable insulation 956, cable insulation screen 958, cable shield 960 and cable jacket 962 may correspond to central conductor 352, insulation 356, insulation screen 358, shield 360, and jacket 362 of FIG. 3 , respectively, such that a description of the respective layers is omitted here for brevity.

As illustrated in FIG. 15 , cable accessory 900 includes, in some examples, a monitoring device 920 and a plurality of layers (e.g., generally concentric or generally coaxial layers), such as connector 902, insulator 904, low side electrode 906, separator 908, ground conductor 910, and jacket 912. Cable accessory 900 may include additional or fewer layers. Connector 902, insulator 904, low side electrode 906, separator 908, ground conductor 910 may correspond to connector 702, insulator 704, low side electrode 706, separator 708, ground conductor 710 of FIGS. 7 , respectively, such that a description of the respective layers is omitted for brevity. Jacket 912 may be a plastic or rubber polymer, such as polyvinyl chloride or polyethylene.

Cable accessory 900 may include a molded cable splice body 905. In some instances, splice body 905 is an integrated unit that includes splice electrode 909, insulator 904, low side electrode 906, and separator 908 in an integrated unit. In other words, according to some examples, splice electrode 909, insulator 904, low side electrode 906, and separator 908 may form a single, cohesive structure or device, which may be attached or installed with other layers to form a cable accessory 900. Splice body 905 may include an integrated monitoring device 920.

In some examples, cable accessory 900 includes a splice electrode 909 concentrically covering connector 902. For example, splice electrode 909 may include an electrically conductive material disposed between connector 902 and insulator 904.

Upon installation, cable accessory 900 electrically and physically couples electrical cables 932A and 932B. In the example of FIG. 15 , connector 902 electrically couples the central conductor 952 of electrical cables 932A and 932B. As shown in FIG. 15 , ground conductor 910 electrically couples cable shield 960 of electrical cable 932A with the shield 960 of electrical cable 932B. Low side electrode 906 may be electrically isolated from connector 902 and ground conductor 910. In other words, during operation, central conductors 952 and connector 902 may be at a high potential (e.g., thousands or hundreds of thousands of volts), the potential of cable shield 960 and ground conductor 910 may be at a ground potential, and electrode 906 may float between the ground potential and the high voltage potential. Monitoring device 920 is electrically coupled to ground conductor 910 and low side electrode 906 via electrical connections 918A, 918B, respectively (collectively, electrical connections 918).

In operation, monitoring device 920 may include the functionality of monitoring device 720 of FIGS. 7-13 . In some examples, monitoring device 920 includes one or more processors, one or more sensors, one or more communication units, one or more power harvesting devices, or a combination therein. For example, monitoring device 920 may include one or more sensors configured to generate sensor data indicative of the health of cable accessory 900. Monitoring device 920 may determine the health of cable accessory 900 based at least in part on the sensor data. In some examples, monitoring device 920 determines the health of cable accessory 900 based on event data, such as the sensor data, device data, manufacturing data, installation data, or a combination therein. Monitoring device 920 may determine the health of cable accessory 900 by applying one or more models to the event data, for example, to predict whether the cable accessory 900 will fail within a predetermined amount of time. Responsive to determining the health of cable accessory 900, monitoring device 920 may output data indicative of the health of cable accessory 900, such as all or a portion of the sensor data, a summary of the sensor data, analysis results based on the sensor data, or a combination therein. In some examples, monitoring device 920 outputs the data to EEMS 6 of FIGS. 1-2 using wired communication techniques (e.g., power line communication) and/or wireless communication techniques (e.g., LTE, Bluetooth®, WiFi®). According to some examples, monitoring device 920 may output event data without determining a health of cable accessory 900. For instance, monitoring device 920 may output event data to gateway 28 and/or EEMS 6 and EEMS 6 and/or gateway 28 may determine the health of cable accessory 900 based on the event data.

FIGS. 16A-16B are conceptual diagrams illustrating an example cable accessory 1000 coupling an electrical cable 1032 to a cable termination lug 1080, in accordance with one or more aspects of this disclosure. Cable accessory 1000 may be an example of cable accessory 34F of FIG. 1 , such as a cable termination body. Electrical cable 1032 may be examples of electrical cables 32 described with reference to FIGS. 1-3 . It should be understood that electrical cable 1032 and cable accessory 1000 are not necessarily drawn to scale. Cable termination lug 1080 can be formed out of a conductive material, such as copper or aluminum.

In the example of FIG. 16A, electrical cable 1032 include a plurality of concentric layers, such as cable central conductor 1052, cable insulation 1056, cable insulation screen 1058, cable shield 1060 (also referred to as sheath 1060), and cable jacket 1062. However, in some examples, electrical cable 1032 may include more or fewer layers. Cable central conductor 1052, cable insulation 1056, cable insulation screen 1058, cable shield 1060, and cable jacket 1062 may correspond to central conductor 352, insulation 356, insulation screen 358, shield 360, and jacket 362 of FIG. 3 , respectively, such that a description of the respective layers is omitted here for brevity.

In the example of FIGS. 16A-16B, cable accessory 1000 includes monitoring device 1020, which may correspond to the monitoring device 720 of FIG. 7 and may include similar components (e.g., processors, communication units, sensors, and power sources) and functionality.

In the example of FIGS. 16A and 16B, cable accessory 1000 includes a plurality of layers, such as insulator 1004 and jacket 1012. Cable accessory 1000 may include additional or fewer layers. Insulator 1004 may include an insulating material, such as an elastomeric rubber (e.g., ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM)). Jacket 1012 may be a plastic or rubber polymer, such as polyvinyl chloride or polyethylene.

In the example of FIG. 16A, cable accessory 1000 includes low side electrode 1006, which may be an example of low side electrode 706 of FIG. 7 . In such examples, low side electrode 1006 may be electrically isolated from cable central connector 1052 and cable shield 1060 of electrical cable 1032. Stated another way, low side electrode 1006 may be at a different potential than either cable central connector 1052 (which is at a relatively high line voltage) and cable shield 1060 (at ground). Monitoring device 1020 is electrically coupled to ground conductor 1060 and low side electrode 1006 via electrical connections 1018A, 1018B, respectively (collectively, electrical connections 1018).

In the example of FIG. 16B, electrical cable 1032 includes low side electrode 1068 (e.g., additionally or alternatively to low side electrode 1006 of cable accessory 1000) and separator 1068. Low side electrode 1068 may be similar to low side electrode 706 of FIG. 7 . Separator 1068 may electrically isolate low side electrode 1006 from cable insulation screen 1058 and cable shield 1060 of electrical cable 1032.

In operation, monitoring device 1020 may include the functionality of monitoring device 720 of FIGS. 7-13 . In some examples, monitoring device 1020 includes one or more processors, one or more sensors, one or more communication units, one or more power harvesting devices, or a combination therein. For example, monitoring device 1020 may include one or more sensors configured to generate sensor data indicative of the health of cable accessory 1000. Monitoring device 1020 may determine the health of cable accessory 1000 based at least in part on the sensor data. In some examples, monitoring device 1020 determines the health of cable accessory 1000 based on event data, such as the sensor data, device data, manufacturing data, installation data, or a combination therein. Monitoring device 1020 may determine the health of cable accessory 1000 by applying one or more models to the event data, for example, to predict whether the cable accessory 1000 will fail within a predetermined amount of time. Responsive to determining the health of cable accessory 1000, monitoring device 1020 may output data indicative of the health of cable accessory 1000, such as all or a portion of the sensor data, a summary of the sensor data, analysis results based on the sensor data, or a combination therein. In some examples, monitoring device 1020 outputs the data to EEMS 6 of FIGS. 1-2 using wired communication techniques (e.g., power line communication) and/or wireless communication techniques (e.g., LTE, Bluetooth®, WiFi®). According to some examples, monitoring device 1020 may output event data without determining a health of cable accessory 1000. For instance, monitoring device 1020 may output event data to gateway 28 and/or EEMS 6 and EEMS 6 and/or gateway 28 may determine the health of cable accessory 1000 based on the event data.

In the present detailed description of the preferred embodiments, reference is made to the accompanying drawings, which illustrate specific embodiments in which the invention may be practiced. The illustrated embodiments are not intended to be exhaustive of all embodiments according to the invention. It is to be understood that other embodiments may be utilized and structural or logical changes may be made without departing from the scope of the present invention. The following detailed description, therefore, is not to be taken in a limiting sense, and the scope of the present invention is defined by the appended claims.

Unless otherwise indicated, all numbers expressing feature sizes, amounts, and physical properties used in the specification and claims are to be understood as being modified in all instances by the term “about.” Accordingly, unless indicated to the contrary, the numerical parameters set forth in the foregoing specification and attached claims are approximations that can vary depending upon the desired properties sought to be obtained by those skilled in the art utilizing the teachings disclosed herein.

As used in this specification and the appended claims, the singular forms “a,” “an,” and “the” encompass embodiments having plural referents, unless the content clearly dictates otherwise. As used in this specification and the appended claims, the term “or” is generally employed in its sense including “and/or” unless the content clearly dictates otherwise.

Spatially related terms, including but not limited to, “proximate,” “distal,” “lower,” “upper,” “beneath,” “below,” “above,” and “on top,” if used herein, are utilized for ease of description to describe spatial relationships of an element(s) to another. Such spatially related terms encompass different orientations of the device in use or operation in addition to the particular orientations depicted in the figures and described herein. For example, if an object depicted in the figures is turned over or flipped over, portions previously described as below or beneath other elements would then be above or on top of those other elements.

As used herein, when an element, component, or layer for example is described as forming a “coincident interface” with, or being “on,” “connected to,” “coupled with,” “stacked on” or “in contact with” another element, component, or layer, it can be directly on, directly connected to, directly coupled with, directly stacked on, in direct contact with, or intervening elements, components or layers may be on, connected, coupled or in contact with the particular element, component, or layer, for example. When an element, component, or layer for example is referred to as being “directly on,” “directly connected to,” “directly coupled with,” or “directly in contact with” another element, there are no intervening elements, components or layers for example. The techniques of this disclosure may be implemented in a wide variety of computer devices, such as servers, laptop computers, desktop computers, notebook computers, tablet computers, hand-held computers, smart phones, and the like. Any components, modules or units have been described to emphasize functional aspects and do not necessarily require realization by different hardware units. The techniques described herein may also be implemented in hardware, software, firmware, or any combination thereof. Any features described as modules, units or components may be implemented together in an integrated logic device or separately as discrete but interoperable logic devices. In some cases, various features may be implemented as an integrated circuit device, such as an integrated circuit chip or chipset. Additionally, although a number of distinct modules have been described throughout this description, many of which perform unique functions, all the functions of all of the modules may be combined into a single module, or even split into further additional modules. The modules described herein are only exemplary and have been described as such for better ease of understanding.

If implemented in software, the techniques may be realized at least in part by a computer-readable medium comprising instructions that, when executed in a processor, performs one or more of the methods described above. The computer-readable medium may comprise a tangible computer-readable storage medium and may form part of a computer program product, which may include packaging materials. The computer-readable storage medium may comprise random access memory (RAM) such as synchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM), read-only memory (ROM), non-volatile random access memory (NVRAM), electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), FLASH memory, magnetic or optical data storage media, and the like. The computer-readable storage medium may also comprise a non-volatile storage device, such as a hard-disk, magnetic tape, a compact disk (CD), digital versatile disk (DVD), Blu-ray disk, holographic data storage media, or other non-volatile storage device.

The term “processor,” as used herein may refer to any of the foregoing structure or any other structure suitable for implementation of the techniques described herein. In addition, in some aspects, the functionality described herein may be provided within dedicated software modules or hardware modules configured for performing the techniques of this disclosure. Even if implemented in software, the techniques may use hardware such as a processor to execute the software, and a memory to store the software. In any such cases, the computers described herein may define a specific machine that is capable of executing the specific functions described herein. Also, the techniques could be fully implemented in one or more circuits or logic elements, which could also be considered a processor.

In one or more examples, the functions described may be implemented in hardware, software, firmware, or any combination thereof. If implemented in software, the functions may be stored on or transmitted over, as one or more instructions or code, a computer-readable medium and executed by a hardware-based processing unit. Computer-readable media may include computer-readable storage media, which corresponds to a tangible medium such as data storage media, or communication media including any medium that facilitates transfer of a computer program from one place to another, e.g., according to a communication protocol. In this manner, computer-readable media generally may correspond to (1) tangible computer-readable storage media, which is non-transitory or (2) a communication medium such as a signal or carrier wave. Data storage media may be any available media that can be accessed by one or more computers or one or more processors to retrieve instructions, code and/or data structures for implementation of the techniques described in this disclosure. A computer program product may include a computer-readable medium.

By way of example, and not limitation, such computer-readable storage media can comprise RAM, ROM, EEPROM, CD-ROM or other optical disk storage, magnetic disk storage, or other magnetic storage devices, flash memory, or any other medium that can be used to store desired program code in the form of instructions or data structures and that can be accessed by a computer. Also, any connection is properly termed a computer-readable medium. For example, if instructions are transmitted from a website, server, or other remote source using a coaxial cable, fiber optic cable, twisted pair, digital subscriber line (DSL), or wireless technologies such as infrared, radio, and microwave, then the coaxial cable, fiber optic cable, twisted pair, DSL, or wireless technologies such as infrared, radio, and microwave are included in the definition of medium. It should be understood, however, that computer-readable storage media and data storage media do not include connections, carrier waves, signals, or other transient media, but are instead directed to non-transient, tangible storage media. Disk and disc, as used, includes compact disc (CD), laser disc, optical disc, digital versatile disc (DVD), floppy disk and Blu-ray disc, where disks usually reproduce data magnetically, while discs reproduce data optically with lasers. Combinations of the above should also be included within the scope of computer-readable media.

Instructions may be executed by one or more processors, such as one or more digital signal processors (DSPs), general purpose microprocessors, application specific integrated circuits (ASICs), field programmable logic arrays (FPGAs), or other equivalent integrated or discrete logic circuitry. Accordingly, the term “processor”, as used may refer to any of the foregoing structure or any other structure suitable for implementation of the techniques described. In addition, in some aspects, the functionality described may be provided within dedicated hardware and/or software modules. Also, the techniques could be fully implemented in one or more circuits or logic elements.

The techniques of this disclosure may be implemented in a wide variety of devices or apparatuses, including a wireless handset, an integrated circuit (IC) or a set of ICs (e.g., a chip set). Various components, modules, or units are described in this disclosure to emphasize functional aspects of devices configured to perform the disclosed techniques, but do not necessarily require realization by different hardware units. Rather, as described above, various units may be combined in a hardware unit or provided by a collection of interoperative hardware units, including one or more processors as described above, in conjunction with suitable software and/or firmware.

It is to be recognized that depending on the example, certain acts or events of any of the methods described herein can be performed in a different sequence, may be added, merged, or left out all together (e.g., not all described acts or events are necessary for the practice of the method). Moreover, in certain examples, acts or events may be performed concurrently, e.g., through multi-threaded processing, interrupt processing, or multiple processors, rather than sequentially.

In some examples, a computer-readable storage medium includes a non-transitory medium. The term “non-transitory” indicates, in some examples, that the storage medium is not embodied in a carrier wave or a propagated signal. In certain examples, a non-transitory storage medium stores data that can, over time, change (e.g., in RAM or cache).

Various examples have been described. These and other examples are within the scope of the following claims. 

What is claimed is:
 1. A sensing device configured to couple to an electrical power cable, the sensing device comprising: a plurality of concentric layers, the plurality of concentric layers including: a first layer configured to concentrically surround a central conductor of the electrical cable and comprising an insulating material; a second layer comprising a conducting material; and a third layer comprising a resistive material configured to resist electrical flow between the second layer and a ground conductor exterior to the third layer, wherein the second layer is disposed between the first layer and the third layer; and a monitoring device comprising: a sensor electrically coupled to the second layer and configured to generate sensor data indicative of a health of the device, wherein the sensor data is indicative of whether the sensing device will fail within a predetermined amount of time, wherein the sensor data includes at least one of a temperature, a current, or a voltage; and a communication unit configured to output data indicative of the sensor data.
 2. The sensing device of claim 1, wherein the communication unit is electrically coupled to the second layer and is configured to output the data indicative of the sensor data via power line communications.
 3. The sensing device of claim 1, wherein the sensor includes at least one of: a temperature sensor, a current sensor, a voltage sensor, or a partial discharge sensor.
 4. The sensing device of claim 1, wherein the monitoring device further comprises a power harvesting circuit electrically coupled to the second layer and configured to harvest electrical power from the electrical cable.
 5. The sensing device of claim 1, further comprising a splice body forming the plurality of concentric layers, and wherein the first layer is configured to concentrically surround an electrical connector that splices a first electrical cable and a second electrical cable to form the central conductor of the electrical cable.
 6. The sensing device of claim 1, further comprising a fourth layer comprising a conductive material and configured to concentrically surround the third layer, wherein the monitoring device is electrically coupled to the second layer and the fourth layer.
 7. A system comprising: a cable accessory configured to couple to an electrical cable, the cable accessory comprising a splice body and a monitoring device, wherein the splice body includes a plurality of concentric layers, the plurality of concentric layers including: a first layer configured to concentrically surround a central conductor of the electrical cable and comprising an insulating material; a second layer comprising a conducting material; and a third layer comprising a resistive material configured to resist electrical flow between the second layer and a ground conductor exterior to the third layer, wherein the second layer is disposed between the first layer and the third layer; and wherein the monitoring device comprises a sensor electrically coupled to the second layer and configured to generate sensor data indicative of one or more conditions of the cable accessory, wherein the sensor data is indicative of whether the sensing device will fail within a predetermined amount of time, wherein the sensor data includes at least one of a temperature, a current, or a voltage; at least one processor; and a non-transitory memory comprising instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to: receive the sensor data; determine, based at least in part on the sensor data, a health of the cable accessory; and responsive to determining the health of the cable accessory, perform an operation.
 8. The system of claim 7, wherein the cable accessory includes a communication unit electrically coupled to the second layer of the splice body and configured to output data via powerline communications.
 9. The system of claim 7, wherein the cable accessory includes a power harvesting circuit electrically coupled to the second layer and configured to harvest electrical power from the electrical cable.
 10. The system of claim 7, further comprising an electrical connector configured to splice a first electrical cable and a second electrical cable that form the electrical cable, wherein the splice body is configured to concentrically surround the electrical connector.
 11. The system of claim 7, further comprising a conductor configured to concentrically enclose the splice body.
 12. The system of claim 7, wherein execution of the instructions cause the at least one processor to determine the health of the cable accessory by at least causing the at least one processor to predict whether the cable accessory will fail within a predetermined amount of time.
 13. The system of claim 7, wherein execution of the instructions further causes the at least one processor to determine the health of the cable accessory by at least causing the at least one processor to: apply a model to at least the sensor data generated by the one or more sensors of the cable accessory to determine the operational heath of the cable accessory.
 14. The system of claim 13, wherein execution of the instructions cause the at least one processor to apply the model by at least causing the processor to apply the model to the sensor data and data indicative of one or more characteristics of the device, wherein the one or more characteristics of the cable accessory include one or more of: location of the device, manufacturer of the device, installer of the device, or type of the device.
 15. The system of claim 7, wherein the monitoring device includes the non-transitory memory and the at least one processor.
 16. The system of claim 7, wherein the at least one processor includes a first processor and a second processor, wherein the monitoring device includes the first processor, wherein execution of the instructions cause the first processor to determine the health of the cable accessory, and wherein execution of the instructions cause the second processor to perform the operation.
 17. A method comprising: receiving, by at least one processor of a computing system, sensor data generated by at least one sensor of a cable accessory configured to couple to an electrical cable, wherein the sensor is electrically coupled to a second layer of a splice body that includes a plurality of concentric layers, the plurality of concentric layers including a first layer configured to concentrically surround a central conductor of the electrical cable and comprising an insulating material, the second layer that includes a conducting material, and a third layer comprising a resistive material configured to resist electrical flow between the second layer and a ground conductor exterior to the third layer, wherein the second layer is disposed between the first layer and the third layer; determining, by the at least one processor, based at least in part on the sensor data, a health of the cable accessory, wherein determining the health of the cable accessory comprises predicting whether the cable accessory will fail within a predetermined amount of time, wherein the sensor data includes at least one of a temperature, a current, or a voltage; and performing, by the at least one processor, based on the health of the cable accessory, at least one operation.
 18. The method of claim 17, further comprising outputting, by a communication unit of the cable accessory and via power line communications, data indicative of the health of the cable accessory, wherein the communication unit is electrically coupled to the second layer of the splice body.
 19. The method of claim 17, wherein performing the operation comprises performing the operation in response to predicting that the cable accessory will fail within the predetermined amount of time. 